Print
Email
Print Edition Stories
Researchers at MIT outline a discovery in a scientific journal that the school says could make all-optical silicon chips possible, which could lead to much faster computing.
According to a release from the MIT News Office, Caroline Ross, a materials science and engineering professor at MIT, co-authored a paper reporting a new device that was published online Nov. 13 in the journal Nature. The device functions like a diode does for electricity — allow it to travel in one direction but not the other — except this device does it with laser light. This has the potential to allow for the creation of photonic chips — integrated circuits just like electrical semiconductors that contain all the parts for computation on a single chip.
Right now, it allows light to function like electricity does in a semiconductor requires an off-chip device called an isolator. By creating a photonic device that can be made as a part of an integrated circuit, the MIT researchers eliminated that isolator, which removes the need for the light traveling along a communications network to be converted into electricity for it to pass through the circuit-based network switches and systems, and then back to light to continue to its next stage in its travels.
Ross, along with fellow materials science and engineering professor Lionel Kimerling and former students Lei Bi ’11 and Juejun Hu Ph.D. ’09, figured out that the fairly common gemstone garnet had the properties they needed to make the optical “diode for light” as it is both transparent and magnetic. The release cites Ross saying, “The whole system could be made using standard microchip manufacturing machinery.”
In 2003, Ross was one of the recipients of one of the first grants from the MIT Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation, getting some part of an overall $1.3 million award for “a simpler way to make microelectronic devices.”
The new research was funded by the National Science Foundation and by an Intel fellowship awarded to former student Bi, the release said.
Comments
If you are commenting using a Facebook account, your profile information may be displayed with your comment depending on your privacy settings. By leaving the 'Post to Facebook' box selected, your comment will be published to your Facebook profile in addition to the space below.
RSS Feeds
