A research team from the National University of Singapore has recently invented a novel "converter" that can harness the speed and small size of plasmons for high frequency data processing and transmission in nanoelectronics.
Advancement in nanoelectronics, which is the use of nanotechnology in electronic components, has been fueled by the ever-increasing need to shrink the size of electronic devices in a bid to produce smaller, faster and smarter gadgets such as computers, memory storage devices, displays and medical diagnostic tools.
While most advanced electronic devices are powered by photonics – which involves the use of photons to transmit information – photonic elements are usually large in size and this greatly limits their use in many advanced nanoelectronics systems.
Plasmons, which are waves of electrons that move along the surface of a metal after it is struck by photons, holds great promise for disruptive technologies in nanoelectronics. They are comparable to photons in terms of speed (they also travel with the speed of light), and they are much smaller. This unique property of plasmons makes them ideal for integration with nanoelectronics. However, earlier attempts to harness plasmons as information carriers had little success.
Addressing this technological gap, a research team from the National University of Singapore (NUS) has recently invented a novel "converter" that can harness the speed and small size of plasmons for high frequency data processing and transmission in nanoelectronics.
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-10-breakthrough-ultra-fast-nanoscale.html#jCp
A research team from the National University of Singapore has recently invented a novel "converter" that can harness the speed and small size of plasmons for high frequency data processing and transmission in nanoelectronics.
Advancement in nanoelectronics, which is the use of nanotechnology in electronic components, has been fueled by the ever-increasing need to shrink the size of electronic devices in a bid to produce smaller, faster and smarter gadgets such as computers, memory storage devices, displays and medical diagnostic tools.
While most advanced electronic devices are powered by photonics – which involves the use of photons to transmit information – photonic elements are usually large in size and this greatly limits their use in many advanced nanoelectronics systems.
Plasmons, which are waves of electrons that move along the surface of a metal after it is struck by photons, holds great promise for disruptive technologies in nanoelectronics. They are comparable to photons in terms of speed (they also travel with the speed of light), and they are much smaller. This unique property of plasmons makes them ideal for integration with nanoelectronics. However, earlier attempts to harness plasmons as information carriers had little success.
Addressing this technological gap, a research team from the National University of Singapore (NUS) has recently invented a novel "converter" that can harness the speed and small size of plasmons forhigh frequency data processing and transmission in nanoelectronics.