Following a similar trend in the scaling of electronic integrated circuits (ICs), the downscaling of optical sources promises revenues such as higher energy efficiency and faster operation speed in photonic ICs. With the rapid development of advanced fabrication techniques and optical cavity designs, light confinement and manipulation at the nanoscale, far below the diffraction limit of light, have been achieved. However, downscaling can lead to problems such as large threshold current and excessive self-heating for nanolasers. In addition, the modulation bandwidth of a laser is ultimately limited by the large damping at high injection current levels due to gain compression. Recently, nanoLEDs that utilize the Purcell effect were proposed as fast and efficient nanoscale light sources to address the limitations of nanolasers. In this review, we summarize recent advances and several important figures of merit of nanoLEDs. To illustrate their practicalities, we use a specific nano-emitter design example to calculate and predict the dynamic response as well as energy consumption of the device with a rate-equation analysis. This short review is intended to offer new perspectives to the design and application of nanoscale light sources in high-speed on-chip optical communication systems.

遵循电子集成电路（IC）规模缩小的类似趋势，光源的缩小有望带来收入，例如更高的能效和更快的光子IC速度。随着先进制造技术和光学腔体设计的迅速发展，已经实现了远远低于光的衍射极限的纳米级光限制和操纵。但是，缩小尺寸会导致诸如大阈值电流和纳米激光器过度自热的问题。此外，由于增益压缩，在高注入电流水平下，大的阻尼最终限制了激光器的调制带宽。最近，提出了利用珀塞尔效应的纳米LED作为快速高效的纳米级光源，以解决纳米激光的局限性。在这篇评论中 我们总结了纳米LED的最新进展和几个重要的优点。为了说明它们的实用性，我们使用一个特定的纳米发射器设计实例，通过速率方程分析来计算和预测设备的动态响应以及能耗。这篇简短的综述旨在为高速片上光通信系统中纳米级光源的设计和应用提供新的观点。