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Thursday, June 02, 2011

#OPTICS: "Nanoscale waveguide boosts silicon photonics"


The world's first 'truly nanoscale' silicon waveguide for integrated on-chip optical communications was recently claimed by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Based on its invention of a new type of quasi-particle called a hybrid plasmon polariton, Berkeley Lab's HPP sidesteps optical losses plaguing earlier attempts at silicon photonics with a new operating mode that makes the best of photonic and plasmonic systems—combining high quantum confinement with low signal loss, thus opening the door to the nanoscale on-chip lasers, quantum computing, and single-photon all-optical switches.
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