Metamaterial From Silver Dimers Could Be Used To Create Next Gen Faster PCs

Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT), in collaboration with the Russian academy of sciences have developed a metamaterial from a planar periodic array of silver dimers that might incredibly boost the processing speed of electronic gadgets. Not only that, the negative refraction property of meta materials also opens up the possibility of developing the famous '#-Link-Snipped-#', of Harry Potter fame. Scientists have confirmed that their research will aid the process of making compact optical devices, and computer simulations have showed that it would be a high performance material for light of wavelength 400-500 nanometres (violet, blue and light blue) with a practical accuracy of 60-80%.


A meta material is actually an engineered “smart” material which is not found in Nature but is devised to aid in various scientific applications. The phenomenon observed in such metamaterials is that of 'negative refraction', which is a very special type of refraction. The principles of geometrical optics states that when a light ray is travelling from a rarer to a denser medium, the ray bends towards the normal.

Thus, for a ray of light incident in the second quadrant, the refracted ray moves into the fourth quadrant. However, in 'negative refraction' , the ray moves into the 3rd quadrant after refraction. MIPT researchers have shown that negative directional transmission of an incident beam steering allows one to manipulate the optical wavefront in the visible regime, when metal rods are used instead of conventional dielectric ones.


The research was published in the Optical Material Express, which is a publication of the Optical Society(OSA). The researchers explained that they studied plane wave scattering on a planar periodic array of silver dimers, which if accurately designed shows a remarkable sharp turn of the Transverse Electric-polarized incident beam in orthogonal directions, through the effects of negative-angle refraction which is a desired phenomenon required for enhancing computer processing speeds

The metal nanoparticles are known to exhibit strong response to external electromagnetic fields at specific frequencies due to the excitation of plasmonic resonances. This large optical resonance is achieved by incorporating optical coupling (using optocouplers) between silver nanoparticles.

The team was finally able to adjust the parameters of the lattice so that the resulting optical lattice response is synchronized with the negative refraction of the incident wave.

The encouraging results achieved can be applied to control optical signals in different optical devices and in the process produce faster PC's. Although the research is still in its infancy, the new metamaterial definitely possesses the potential to remarkably increase the computational speed of different devices.

Source: #-Link-Snipped-#