Researchers Create First All Optical Nanowire NAND Gate

mhore writes: Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have created the first all optical, nanowire-based NAND gate which paves the way towards photonic devices that manipulate light to perform computations. From the release, " The research team began by precisely cutting a gap into a nanowire. They then pumped enough energy into the first nanowire segment that it began to emit laser light from its end and through the gap. Because the researchers started with a single nanowire, the two segment ends were perfectly matched, allowing the second segment to efficiently absorb and transmit the light down its length."

The gate works by shining light on the nanowire structure to turn on and off information transported through the wire. The research appeared this month in Nature Nanotechnology.