A joint £6 million research programme in nanoplasmonic devices was launched this week at Imperial College London and Queen’s University Belfast with funding from the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.
The project is also supported by Intel, Seagate, Ericsson, Oxonica, IMEC and the UK National Physical Laboratory.
The key components of nanoplasmonic devices are nanoscale metal structures that guide and direct light. These structures, tailor-made to interact with light in an unusual and highly controlled way, could be used to build new kinds of super-high-speed optical computers.
At present, the speed with which computers process information is limited by the time it takes for the information to be transferred between electronic components. Currently this information is transferred using nanoscale metallic wires that transmit the signals as an electric current.
To speed up the process, the scientists at Queen’s and Imperial hope to develop a way of sending the signals along the same wires in the form of light. In order to achieve this, they are developing new metallic devices including tiny nanoscale sources of light, nanoscale “waveguides”, to channel light along a desired route, and nanoscale detectors to pick up the light signals.
Similar approaches may also help in the development of devices for faster Internet services.
Anatoly Zayats from Queen’s Centre for Nanostructured Media who leads the project, said, “This is basic research into how light interacts with matter on the nanoscale. But we will work together with, and listen to, our industrial partners to direct research in the direction that hopefully will lead to new improved products and services that everyone can buy from the shelf.”
Stefan Maier, who leads the research team at Imperial, added, “This is an exciting step towards developing computers that use light waves, not electrical current, to handle data and process information. In the future these optical computers will provide us with more processing power and higher speed. This will also open the door to a world of possibilities in scientific fields at the interface with the biosciences.”
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