Nov 25 2011
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have succeeded in creating a component to furnish complete optical circuits on silicon chips, at last with the significant advancements in photonic chip development.
This novel device reduces the complex electronic-conversion steps, enabling direct processing of the light signal.
Caroline Ross, an MIT Toyota Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and a co-author of the paper recording this research published in the journal Nature Photonics says that this novel component is a “diode for light,” which is similar to an electronic diode and it creates a single pathway for light. The researchers had to find a transparent and magnetic material to develop this device, but eventually employed garnet, a material which usually fails to grow on the silicon wafer based microchips, but provides various refraction indexes. A thin film of garnet was deposited on one half of a loop linked to a light-transmitting channel present on the chip, resulting in free movement of light on chip’s one end, while the other beam of light gets directed into the loop. This technology increases the speed of data-transmission systems, where optical computing with rapid velocity of light allows multiple beams of light, carrying individual streams of data to enter a single optical fiber or circuit without any interference.
Source: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/