"Optical communication uses the extraordinary speed of light as the signal, but right now it's still controlled and limited by electrical signaling at the end," said Yun-shik Lee, an associate professor in the OSU Department of Physics. "Electrons and wires are too slow, they're a bottleneck. The future is in optical switching, in which wires are replaced by emitters and detectors that can function at terahertz speeds."
Existing communications and computer architecture are increasingly being limited by the pedestrian speed of electrons moving through wires, and the future of high-speed communication and computing is in optics, experts say. The Holy Grail of results would be "wireless interconnecting," which operates at speeds 100 to 1,000 times faster than current technology. The new discovery, made by researchers at Oregon State University, the University of Iowa and Philipps University in Germany, has identified a way in which nanoscale devices based on gallium arsenide can respond to strong terahertz pulses for an extremely short period, controlling the electrical signal in a semiconductor. The research builds on previous findings for which OSU holds an issued patent.
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