Researchers send electricity, light along same super-thin wire

Tue, 21 Oct 2014 11:00:17 -0400

A new combination of materials can efficiently guide electricity and light along the same tiny wire, a finding that could be a step towards building computer chips capable of transporting digital information at the speed of light. Reporting today in The Optical Society’s (OSA) high-impact journal Optica, optical and material scientists at the University of Rochester and Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich describe a basic model circuit consisting of a silver nanowire and a single-layer flake of molybdenum disulfide (MoS2). Using a laser to excite electromagnetic waves called plasmons at the surface of the wire, the researchers found that the MoS2 flake at the far end of the wire generated strong light emission. Going in the other direction, as the excited electrons relaxed, they were collected by the wire and converted back into plasmons, which emitted light of the same wavelength. “We have found that there is pronounced nanoscale light-matter interaction between plasmons and atomically thin material that can be exploited for nanophotonic integrated circuits,” said Nick Vamivakas, assistant professor of quantum optics and quantum physics at the University of Rochester and senior author of the paper... _Read the full University of Rochester Newscenter story._ _Access the Optica paper._