Slashdot Mirror
Photonic Breakthrough Allows 'Lab-on-a-Chip'
Roland Piquepaille writes "Georgia Tech researchers have shrunk an optical device called wavelength demultiplier (WD) by combining into one crystal three unique properties of photonics crystals. This optical discovery opens the way to sophisticated and cheap bio-sensors mounted on 'lab-on-a-chip' devices -- sensors to run blood tests, detect chemicals in water supplies or for drug testing. Their new WD is less than a millimeter in all dimensions rather than the several centimeters of other currently available WDs. And it should not cost more to produce."
40 WDs = 40 x WD = WD40 ?
Now the key components for processing light have been miniturised, it should be possible to use this for the basis of a simple optical computer.
From the sources below:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/08/03/photonic_
So... it seems like the photonics are ready. We just need engineers to step up to the challenge.
Signature v3.0, now with 42% less memory usage.
drug testing
The War On Drugs is sooo last century - didn't they get the memo that we're fighting the War On Terror now? They haven't sensationalised it enough - they've got chemical attacks on water supplies in there, but it's too subtle - where's expolsives detection at customs on their list?
That's a "wavelength demultiplexer". It is wrong in the original article.
Download my free songs!
The error is in both the article summary and one place in the article. The proper term is "demultiplexer," not "demultiplier." A "demultiplier" is called a "divider."
As a scientist, this is what I don't really like about scientific journalism. Like the 'New breakthrough in fighting cancer' titles, etc. etc. These are laboratory research developments and will take at least 10 years to evaluate, some of them will end up being impractical before ever being put to use.
I think that scientific journalism should be more than just a PR machine for research labs. Of course they want the message out that they're doing nice stuff, but as it are all just small pieces of advancement, don't bring it as if you just developed a working nuclear fusion reactor ready to connect to the powergrid. Show that you're doing someting nice, what it can do, what the scientific/technical genial idea is that was done to get it, and in what frame we should see it, that should be enough.
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
Poodle-on-a-chip, jackrussell-on-a-chip and the all time favourite alsation-on-a-chip.
Makes me wonder about using an array of them in a camera in order to record colour images in terms of their actual spectral content instead of approximating down to red, green and blue. Then just run them in reverse (I assume the optical demux can be used in reverse) to re-create the display.
o matic vision.
;-)
:-(
This would make a convincing display even for those with colour blindness or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrachromattetrachr
As an aside, it has been mentioned that humans with tetrachromatic vision can see through various types of man-made textiles
Sadly, human tetrachromatic vision occurs only in females
Great! So now I should be able to get a little lab on a chip that analyzes the air and water around me, wherever I go, for pollutants and toxins. Am I glad that we've got the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act that keep my personal environment clean.
Wait, my old chips are telling me that those "clean" Acts are really "dirty". And since the police will arrest you when you photograph them, it's going to be tough on people getting the dirt on polluters.
Or maybe these little LabMans on every allergic person's mobile phones will force a change on all that. Will the government be able to lie to us about our pollution laws being "Clean" laws when our phones are chirping whenever we leave our oxygen tents?
--
make install -not war
I'm sorry, but anytime I see some new invention (bet it instrumentation, drugs, etc) related to healthcare, and they talk about how cheap it will be, I can't help but thing "yeah, right". Maybe it's cheap to produce, but by the time this patent is grabbed up by a money grubbing corporation, then endures the expensive and drawn out FDA approval process, and finally the owner determines the maximum that Medicaid and other insurers are willing to pay for the test, it will hardly be cheap. By cheap they really mean "greater profit margin than with existing technologies".
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
Put some small, fast phototransistors into silicon. Use glass tubes (glass = Si) to propagate the signal to the next point, free of capacitance; maybe we can even tune the permittivity of the glass so the light can propagate faster. Build these crystals and tie them into the silicon to sense the signal and turn it back into a logic level.
Ideal for long hauls where the capacitance is a major factor in the switching speed, or clock distribution trees. The lowered capacitance, and possible increased permittivity, would definitely lead to less skew as well.
All assuming that this technology can switch sufficiently fast.
:(){
The only thing that is interesting about this article is the fact that they've done it with photonic crystal waveguides. My own lab the same thing with silicon-on-insulator waveguides (not photonic crystals though). We are currently testing various biosensors, including a high-resolution (2 Angstrom target) spectrometer for interogating atomic spectra. On of our other designs has been shown to measure sugar concentrations in water, and we're moving to detecting actual biomolecules over the next few weeks.
These guys have great PR but, like most scientific advances, the improvement is really only a tiny step.
For an interesting and informative article on the process, see PHOTONIC CRYSTALS: Demultiplexers harness photonic-crystal dispersion properties in Laser Focus World.