"It is believed that the best computer is to use electrical signals to process and transmit light." Swadik Karl, associate professor of physics at the Northeastern University, said. For this reason people urgently need a kind of chip integration equipment, which can be used in the light input, but also can be used to carry out the logic operation.
Northeastern University and Kyung Hee University scientists jointly published in the latest issue of "nature - photonics journal papers display. It was the first time they on a chip integrated electronic and optical properties, and developed a series based on the chip of innovative equipment, for the manufacture of hybrid optical logic elements provides a scalable platform, also on behalf of the future optical computer manufacturer in a key breakthrough.
Last year, Carle and Rong Junzhong, associate professor of mechanical and industrial engineering, found that if carbon nanotubes and silicon are connected, the speed of light induced current on the interface is faster than that of the conventional photodiode. "This will help us to design advanced equipment for optical switches." Carle said.
According to physicist organization network in February 25th reported that they use this discovery, develop a new type of photoelectric diode based on the logic device, with carbon nanotubes and silicon hybrid connection, you can use two kinds of light and electricity input to control the output current. They also work with the South Korean National University of Professor Quan Yongkun (transliteration) to run the calculation model of these connections.
These newly developed innovative devices include three new components and an upgrade device. The first is "the door" (AND-gate), and electronic and optical input and produce an output, the switch to two factors also have triggered only; the second is "door" (OR-gate), as long as the two photoreceptor which one input, it will produce an output; the third is a 4 bit photoelectric digital - analog converter can be used to convert digital signals to analog signals, such as the MP3 file of digital content into real music, this ability is very important.
Upgrade equipment is the 25 million micro chip are integrated in one of about 1 cm square wafer front end, like a camera sensor. Although this device should be fully functional even more micro chips, but now can be used to test whether they can repeat the assembly process.
The researchers point out that even if the computer wants to output the simplest results, it has to be processed billions of times per second. If every step can be a little bit faster? Carle said, to improve their ability to deal with these steps, we must improve the beginning, this is what we do.
Source: Science and Technology Daily