Get Ready - It's Coming!!!

Posted: Sun Mar 25, 2007 2:33 pm

From a recent article in Scientific American Magazine (April 2007 - page 57) written by Harry A. Atwater – applied Physics and Materials Science Professor at the California Institute of Technology

Just the highlights…

Research into this field began back in the 1980’s.

Plasmonics – squeezing optical signals into super tiny wires by using light to produce electron density waves called “plasmons.” These waves reproduce, spread and multiply “like ripples that spread across the surface of a pond after you throw a stone in the water.”

Excerpts…

“…because the frequency of an optical signal is so much higher than that of an electrical one – more than 400,000 gigahertz verses 60 hertz – the plasmonic circuit would be able to carry much more data. Moreover, because the electrical charge does not travel from one end of a plasmonic circuit to another – the electrons bunch together and spread apart rather than streaming in a single direction – the device is not subject to resistance and capacitance effects that limit the data-carrying capacity of integrated circuits with electrical interconnects.

A Slow Version Already In Existence

Plasmonsters - a three terminal microscopic switch with transistor like properties…

“…the devices could serve as the core of an ultrafast signal-processing system, an advance that could revolutionize computing 10 – 20 years from now.”

Things To Come

SPASER (Surface Plasmon Amplification of Stimulated Emission of Radiation) – a plasmonic analog to the laser … “exists only in theory so far, the researchers have suggested routes to fabricating it using semiconductor quantum dots and metal particles.”

A Cloaking Device - “Some scientists have even speculated that plasmonic materials could alter the electromagnetic field around an object to such an extent that it would become invisible”

Metamaterials – materials in which electron oscillations can result in astounding optical properties

Nanoshells – 100 nanometer wide silica particles with an outer layer of gold. They can be injected into the bloodstream, attach themselves to tumors, hit with an infrared laser beam, produce “resonant electron oscillations” and kill cancer cells.

Well obviously this stuff has some immediate interest to the medical and military professions but I’d like to hear what impact you guys think “400,000 gigahertz of bandwidth and a SPASER” could have on pro-audio, pro-video, home entertainment electronics (Video Games), cell phones, portable media players and the internet in the future?

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