New tool may yield smaller, faster optoelectronics
Thursday, August 11, 2011 - 09:30
in Physics & Chemistry
The steady improvement in speed and power of modern electronics may soon hit the brakes unless new ways are found to pack more structures into microscopic spaces. Unfortunately, engineers are already approaching the limit of what lightthe choice tool for "tweezing" tiny featurescan achieve. But there may be a way of reaching beyond this so-called "diffraction limit" by precisely steering, in real time, a curve-shaped beam of weird "virtual particles" known as surface plasmons.