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Researchers at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh say they are one step closer to technology that could result in electrons being replaced with photons in electronic circuits.
Dr Marcello Ferrera
The researchers led by Dr Marcello Ferrera, an assistant professor in Photonics and Optics at Heriot-Watt, have demonstrated that a compound used in touch-screens called aluminium zinc oxide (AZO) reacts to light when simultaneously shined with ultra-fast laser pulses of different colours.
Dr Ferrera believes this discovery could have an immediate impact for the fabrication of novel photonic components.
“We discovered that we can drastically and reversibly alter the optical properties of the material by using laser light with different colours,” said Dr Ferrera.
“Each colour can induce strong and ultra-fast alteration on both the transparency of the material and the speed at which light propagates into it.”
Dr Ferrera also discovered behaviour which could have consequences for the design and fabrication of optical computing and telecommunication devices.
“The induced alterations, which are typically opposite in sign, can be algebraically summed up one to another. If the material becomes more transparent with one colour and more absorptive with the other, it will not show any appreciable alteration when the optical stimuli occur simultaneously,” said the researcher.
“Electronics have almost reached their capacity and potential; our findings represent a remarkable step towards the full miniaturisation of photonic components: this possibility was just ‘science fiction’ few years ago,” said Dr Ferrera.
Dr Ferrera’s research has been published in Nature Communications.
