A new type of optical switching device only needs a single photon to change state. Unfortunately, it also ignores most incoming photons.
It’s still a long way from a light-based computer, but researchers from IBM Research and Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology have at least provided a glimpse of what such systems could look like. They developed an ‘optical transistor’ that switches up to a thousand times faster than CMOS transistors, requiring only the energy of a single photon to change state.
The device consists of a 35-nanometer-thin sheet of an organic semiconducting polymer, sandwiched between two inorganic ‘mirrors.’ Light introduced inside this microcavity gets trapped, maximizing its interaction with the polymer.
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