According to a March 7 report from the University of Utah, electrical engineers have produced microscopic structures that use light in metals to carry information – achieved through use of a cheap inkjet printer. The new technique controls the electrical conductivity within these microstructures and could eventually be used to rapidly fabricate superfast components in electronic devices, make wireless technology faster, or to print magnetic materials.
The researchers published their complete research findings March 7 in the journal Advanced Optical Materials, in an article titled, "Terahertz Plasmonic Structures Based on Spatially Varying Conductivities."
High-speed Internet and other data-transfer techniques rely on light transported through optical fibers with very high bandwidth. Reducing the number of these fibers allows additional data to be packed into less space. However, optical fibers reach a limit on how much data they can carry as light is packed into smaller and smaller spaces.
In contrast, electronic circuits can be produced at much smaller sizes on silicon wafers. However, electronic data transfer operates at frequencies with much lower bandwidth, reducing the amount of data that can be carried.
Using a new technology called plasmonics – which, according to Stanford University is the study of the interaction between electromagnetic field and free electrons in a metal – researchers combined the best aspects of optical and electronic data transfer. By cramming light into metal structures with dimensions much smaller than its wavelength, data can be transmitted at much higher frequencies – such as terahertz frequencies, which are positioned between microwaves and infrared light on the spectrum of electromagnetic radiation that also includes everything from X-rays to visible light to gamma rays.
"Very little well-developed technology exists to create terahertz plasmonic devices, which have the potential to make wireless devices such as Bluetooth – which operates at 2.4 gigahertz frequency – 1,000 times faster than they are today," said Ajay Nahata, a University of Utah professor of electrical and computer engineering and senior author of the new study.
By means of a commercially accessible inkjet printer and two different color cartridges filled with silver and carbon ink, Nahata and his research team printed 10 different plasmonic structures with a periodic array of 2,500 holes with different sizes and spacing on a 2.5-inch-by-2.5 inch plastic sheet.
The four arrays had holes measuring 450 microns in diameter and spaced 1/25th of an inch apart. Depending on the comparative amounts of silver and carbon ink used, the researchers could manage the plasmonic array's electrical conductivity.
via Technology - Google News http://ift.tt/1n97VsQ
Put the internet to work for you.
0 comments:
Post a Comment