Rice University lab produces microscopic devices for fast
manipulation of incident infrared light
A device that looks like a tiny washboard may clean the
clocks of current commercial products used to manipulate infrared light.
New research by the Rice University lab of Qianfan Xu has
produced a micron-scale spatial light modulator (SLM) like those used in
sensing and imaging devices, but with the potential to run orders of magnitude
faster. Unlike other devices in two-dimensional semiconducting chips, the Rice
chips work in three-dimensional “free space.”
Xu and his Rice colleagues detailed their antenna-on-a-chip
for light modulation this week in Nature’s open-access, online journal
Scientific Reports.