Polymer 'Muscle' Changes How we Look at Color

New Scientist is reporting that in the not-so-distant future computer monitors, and televisions may utilize a color changing polymer that responds to a current instead of existing techniques. From the article: "Aschwanden and colleagues built arrays of 10 pixels, each 80 micrometers across. The pixels consist of a piece of polymer covered with ridges tipped with gold. When white light is shone at the polymer from one side it reflects out of the screen and is also split into different wavelengths by this 'diffraction grating'. However, a slit above the polymer ensures that only one wavelength of light escapes, giving the pixel its color. The pieces of polymer also contract in response to current, like simple muscles. As they do so, the fan of light-waves is moved, changing the color that is fed through the slits above and out of the screen. Cutting the current causes the muscle to return to its original state."

Comments

Re:Application in fiber optics?

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the nice things about fiber is that you can send several "colors" in parallel which will not disturb each other, something impossible with copper.

This is not true.

Different colours are simply different frequencies of light. You can also send different streams of data on different carrier frequencies over a copper transmission line.

This is used all the time, eg. in cable television: you get several television signals in parallel through a single coaxial cable. This is possible because each channel has it's own carrier frequency.

It however is true that the bandwidth of an optical fibre (of course at the frequencies used there) is much much larger.