14 DAY TRIAL // Scientists have been recently researching the concept of microchips that manipulate light, not electricity. MIT team shows how chips that have tiny machines with moving parts, are powered and controlled by the light they manipulate. The theory developed, could produce "smart" optical microchips, that manipulate different wavelengths of light.
The concept behind the "smart" optical microchip is relatively simple, and well understood with the help of quantum physics. However, constructing such complex microchips might pose some manufacturing problems. Light, that is said to power future logical devices, does not exert too much force on a macroscopic body. In fact, we are bombarded every day by trillions of trillions of elementary particles, such as neutrino, and photons, but because they have an incredibly small mass, we can not feel them, and many really do not interact with us.
However, on a microscopic scale, the light coming from an ultra pure laser source could cause photons to bounce off the walls of a cavity, and build up a measurable force called radiation pressure, similar to that exerted by the molecules of gas trapped in an aerosol can.
Because the radiation pressure acts on very small objects, it gives this technique a great advantage to build ring-shaped cavities, as small as only a millionth of a meter in size, located on a metal surface. The movement creates a so-called optical micromachine.
Such a device might have practical use in a concept that involves processing data that travels through fiber-optic networks. Experiments at MIT have demonstrated that this concept could resonate at different frequencies as a result of the color or frequency of the wavelengths of light fired by a laser, towards the micromachine. The "smart" micromachine follows the light frequency. Also this year, an MIT team has showed that a photonic circuit can be integrated on a silicon chip, by polarizing all the light to the same direction.