and speed the processing of optical data. The research required the ability to engineer a metallic surface to produce nanoscale periodic gratings with varying groove depths. This alters the optical properties of the nanopatterned metallic surface, called Surface Dispersion Engineering. The broadband surface light waves are then trapped along this plasmonic metallic surface with each wavelength trapped at a different groove depth, resulting in a trapped rainbow of light. You can get still more scientific detail in the item but I found a later posting, April 12, 2011 news item , also on Nanowerk, where the researcher Qiaoquiang Gan (pronounced "Chow-Chung" and "Gone") gave this description for his work, An electrical engineer at the University at Buffalo, who previously demonstrated experimentally the "rainbow trapping effect" [emphasis mine] -- a phenomenon that could boost optical data storage and communications -- is now working to capture all the colors of the rainbow. In a paper published March 29 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Qiaoquiang Gan (pronounced "Chow-Chung" and "Gone"), PhD, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at the University at Buffalo's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and his colleagues at Lehigh University, where he was a graduate student, described how they slowed broadband light waves using a type of material called nanoplasmonic structures. Gan explains that the ultimate goal is to achieve a breakthrough in optical communications called multiplexed, multiwavelength communications, where optical data can potentially be tamed at different wavelengths, thus greatly increasing processing and transmission