Researchers at Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich have created an optical switch (modulator) orders of magnitude smaller than those currently in use:
Six months ago, a working group led by Jürg Leuthold, Professor of Photonics and Communications already succeeded in proving that the technology could be made smaller and more energy-efficient. As part of that work, the researchers presented a micromodulator measuring just 10 micrometres across – or 10,000 times smaller than modulators in commercial use (see ETH News).
Leuthold and his colleagues have now taken this to the next level by developing the world's smallest optical modulator. And this is probably as small as it can get: the component operates at the level of individual atoms. The footprint has therefore been further reduced by a factor of 1,000 if you include the switch together with the light guides. However, the switch itself is even smaller, with a size measured on the atomic scale. The team's latest development was recently presented in the journal Nano Letters.
In fact, the modulator is significantly smaller than the wavelength of light used in the system. In telecommunications, optical signals are transmitted using laser light with a wavelength of 1.55 micrometres. Normally, an optical device can not be smaller than the wavelength it should process. "Until recently, even I thought it was impossible for us to undercut this limit," stresses Leuthold.
Atomic Scale Plasmonic Switch (DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.5b04537)
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Wednesday February 10 2016, @05:08AM
until the next amazing breakthrough.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday February 10 2016, @05:36AM
But smaller in that case means shaving a few atoms off versus making it orders of magnitude smaller than the switches on the market.
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(Score: 2) by Gravis on Wednesday February 10 2016, @05:49AM
The smallest it can get... until the next amazing breakthrough.
it's a single atom. technology will seem like magic by the time they manage to reduce the scale of the switch itself.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Wednesday February 10 2016, @10:27PM
If I knew how to make it smaller then the article would be about me, but history shows that every time they say there's a hard limit on miniaturization someone finds a way around it. Maybe the device doesn't get smaller but adds the ability to switch several channels in the same size or something.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 10 2016, @08:18AM
what the hell are you talking about? the only way to make it orders of magnitude smaller than this is to use nucleons instead of atoms, or a quark-gluon plasma directly. I sincerely doubt that is reasonable, even if it is possible (and I kind of doubt that too).