Engineers study whether 'light on a wire' is wave of future for circuitry

If data drove itself around in cars, photonics would be a roomy minivan and electronics would be a nimble coupe. Photonic components such as fiber optic cables can carry a lot of data but are bulky compared to electronic circuits. Electronic components such as wires and transistors carry less data but can be incredibly small.
A problem holding back the progress of computing is that with mismatched capacities and sizes, the two technologies are hard to combine in a circuit. Researchers can cobble them together, but a single technology that has the capacity of photonics and the smallness of electronics would be the best bridge of all. A new research group in Stanford's School of Engineering is pioneering just such a technology—plasmonics.

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<p><a href="http://www.physorg.com/news3415.html">Engineers study whether 'light on a wire' is wave of future for circuitry</a></p> <p>If data drove itself around in cars, photonics would be a roomy minivan and electronics would be a nimble coupe. Photonic components such as fiber optic cables can carry a lot of data but are bulky compared to electronic circuits. Electronic components such as wires and transistors carry less data but can be incredibly small. <br>A problem holding back the progress of computing is that with mismatched capacities and sizes, the two technologies are hard to combine in a circuit. Researchers can cobble them together, but a single technology that has the capacity of photonics and the smallness of electronics would be the best bridge of all. A new research group in Stanford's School of Engineering is pioneering just such a technology—plasmonics.</p>