A new technique could be a big step toward photonic ICs and optical computing, according to researchers at ITMO University in St. Petersburg, Russia. The technique uses a single silicon nanoparticle as an optical transistor.
“In research published in the journal Nano Letters, the Russian scientists turned away from using nanoparticles to control the absorption of light and instead have aimed at gaining control of how light scatters off of the nanoparticle,” IEEE.org said.
“The ITMO scientists were able to achieve this control over the scattering of light by irradiating a silicon nanoparticle with intense and ultrashort laser pulses. The laser pulse changed the particle’s properties, causing it to switch the direction in which the incident light was scattered,” IEEE.org added.
The researchers have only experimented with the control beam. In the future the scientists intend to have a signal beam to complete the device.
