New Nano-Laser Created

Many sources are reporting that researchers have created the world's smallest laser since the inception of lasers almost a half-century ago. Dubbed "spasers," as an acronym for "surface plasmon amplification by stimulated emission of radiation," their incredibly tiny size could become a critical component for future technologies like "nanophotonic" circuitry. "Such circuits will require a laser-light source, but current lasers can't be made small enough to integrate them into electronic chips. Now researchers have overcome this obstacle, harnessing clouds of electrons called 'surface plasmons,' instead of the photons that make up light, to create the tiny spasers."

Comments

insead of cirtuit trace?

[FudRucker]

I bet fiber optic would make good connections between multiple chips and/or other similarly capable hardware

Re:insead of cirtuit trace?

[mapsjanhere]

Naturally, to get to the dimensions of current electronics, you'd have to come up with a way to put down an optical fiber using some form of deposition effect, and then figure out how to couple your wave efficiently into the fiber, and convert it back at the destination. Followed by the problem of still being limited by light speed which lets your signal propagate about 6 cm per cycle on a 5 GHz chip. What quickly brings you back to a high speed fiber optical network to transmit large amounts of data, but not to a faster chip which has to rapidly exchange small strings of data preferable in a symmetric fashion.

perhaps

[OrangeMonkey11]

someone can use this to further the idea/technologies of creating an artificial brain; use the spaser as an artificial receptors.

Re:Wake me when they have something in production.

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Except here we have researchers at Purdue, a university with a history of a particularly strong and fruitful connection between science and engineering, doing solid scientific research which may well (or may not, of course) lead to useful commercial development. Believe me, I agree with you entirely about the "bean counters," and I would very much like to see more money directed toward pure research. (Part of this is pure self-interest, since I'm an academic scientist, but I felt this way back when I was doing corporate DBA work too.) The point is that while it may not happen enough, it does happen ... and "who cares" attitudes, like the one displayed in the OP which I replied to, are a major obstacle to it happening more.