Electronics and light don’t go well together on a standard “CMOS’ chip. Researcher Satadal Dutta of the University of Twente now succeeds in introducing a light connection into the heart of a semiconductor chip. In this way, two circuits can be isolated and still communicate. Or: the worlds of electronics and photonics are connected. What is particularly attractive about Dutta’s solution is that no special materials or manufacturing processes are needed: the light comes from silicon.