The Tunable Electromagnetic Vacuum Kurt Busch and Sajeev John Phys. Circuits of Light 3 August 1999 Phys. Microchip designers dream of integrated circuits that run on light. Photons, rather than electrons, would relay signals among millions of transistors, switches, and perhaps microlasers.
Photons are faster and more efficient than electrons, and they can even pass through one another.
They studied the effects of coating its internal surfaces with a liquid crystal, whose light transmission properties are easily controlled by applying an electric field. According to their calculations, the range of forbidden wavelengths at a specific location in the structure can be adjusted by the local electric field, or the band gap can be eliminated altogether. The telecommunications industry is most interested in this technology, according to Mekis, because fiber optic lines could be naturally interfaced with all-optical circuits, rather than including conventional electronics in the system, and because photons provide higher bandwidth than electrons. All rights reserved.