Work on porous Silicon at the University of California at San Diego, reported in Science magazine, suggests that the material will find applications in opto-electronics: in a process similar to that used in photography to print pictures, the California chemists shone a light through conventional film negatives onto small Silicon squares while etching pores in them and found that the light induced reactions that enhanced the etching process, which formed patterns of pores replicating the light and dark areas of the negatives, and when a blue or green laser was later shone on the squares, the negatives’ images were reproduced in glowing red light, suggesting that light emmittors could be etched onto electronic chips with the light emitted used to make connections with other chips or between computers; light emitting dots might also be used for storage; a snag is that the material tends to oxidise in air, lessening its light-emitting ability, and it has a lot of Hydrogen in it that tends to escape, which also reduces the degree of luminescence.
