Cell phones and laptops, powered by increasingly faster and tinier processors, are becoming sleeker and lighter.
Now,
researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) say
light beams shrunk to a few nanometres can drive much faster computing.
Light
carries greater amounts of data more efficiently than electrical
signals through copper wires. The current technology is increasingly
based on optics. The world is already connected by thousands of miles of
optical-fiber cables that deliver email, images, and the latest video
gone viral to your laptop.
As we all produce and consume more
data, computers and communication networks must be able to handle the
deluge of information. Focusing light into tinier spaces can squeeze
more data through optical fibres and increase bandwidth, the journal
Nature Photonics reports.
Moreover, by being able to control light
at such small scales, optical devices can also be made more compact,
requiring less energy to power them, according to a Caltech statement.
But focusing light to such minute scales is inherently difficult.
Once
you reach sizes smaller than the wavelength of light -- a few hundred
nanometers in the case of visible light -- you reach what's called the
diffraction limit, and it's physically impossible to focus light any
further.
But now, Caltech researchers, co-led by assistant
professor of electrical engineering Hyuck Choo, have built a new kind of
waveguide -- a tunnel-like device that channels light -- that gets
around this natural limit.
Because the new device is built on a
semiconductor chip with standard nanofabrication techniques, says Choo,
study co-author, it is easy to integrate with today's technology.