Optoelectronics

Most of the papers of this special issue deal with arrays of elemental detectors or emitters. In spite of diversity in detail, the first six papers have as a common theme the access problem. Performance limits are set by access difficulties, rather than by the properties of the elemental optical transducers themselves. An obvious parallel occurs in LSI, where the difficulties are not found at the individual gate level, Thus, though the subject is optoelectronics, the papers dwell mostly on topics such as organization of access circuitry, scanning noise, and packaging. The consideration of such topics also indicates that the key problems of all-solid-state transducer arrays are being identified and mastered, hastening their impact in the marketplace.