Researchers in the United States have developed a new device to control the beam's orbit around tighter bends.

Absrtact: Looks like a hive, but smaller than a bee sting. A new device, developed by American researchers, can control the beam's orbit in tighter bends without affecting beam strength and integrity, and is expected to raise the internal transmission rate of the computing device

Looks like a hive, but smaller in size than a wasp. A new device, developed by American researchers, can control the beam's orbit in tighter bends without affecting beam strength and integrity, and is expected to increase the internal transmission rate of the computing device by a few thousand, thus laying the groundwork for next-generation ultra-high-speed computing.

The research was made by researchers at the University of Texas-El Paso (UTEP) and the University of Central Florida (UCF), recently published in Optical News. The research background is the bottleneck of the performance of modern circuit board. The circuit board is through the metal wire in the different components to transmit the data in the way of the electric signal, in the circumstance that the periphery technology leaps and bounds, the electronic circuit transmission speed becomes the computation performance bottleneck increasingly.

So microchips and computer makers are starting to look at much faster light signals. However, because the wiring of the circuit board is very dense and the curvature is very large, it is difficult to control the beam and avoid the loss of strength.

UCF's researchers used the nano-scale 3D printing technology to create a miniature grille with a bending rate of twice times the size of the former, and then managed to keep the light from going through the grille while maintaining the intensity. This plastic (epoxy) device, which allows light to occur at 90 °c, is only 20 microns (μm).

This achievement is of great significance. Because the traditional waveguide to the fiber, although also can control the beam transmission, but must be gradually curved to allow the light to pass, if the curvature of the large, light will escape and energy loss. But now the equipment is smaller, there is no room to accommodate the traditional waveguide tube of this step-by-step bending method.

Now the 20-micron device has broken the world record for bending the light (from 45° to 90°), and the next step is to increase it by one fold (180°). If this achievement can be achieved, it means that the line density can reach the level of the current electronic circuit board, thus laying the foundation for the ultra-high speed calculation of optical communication. But it will take time for the technology to make consumer products commercially available, and researchers expect to be able to apply them first to high-performance supercomputers.