PLANNING AND LEADERSHIP FOR A BETTER WORLD
PLANNING AND LEADERSHIP FOR A BETTER WORLD In 1960, a California engineer created the very first functional laser. Today, these devices have become ubiquitous, with applications ranging from surgery and cosmetic skin treatments to military weapons to commercial tools like barcode scanners and laser pointers.
Despite the omnipresence of the laser, its advancement is severely limited by one crucial fact: Its physical length can't be less than half of its light's wavelength. This law of physics means that very small lasers are also very weak. Now, a device from researchers at Tel Aviv University in Israel is bending this rule—leading to powerful, but tiny lasers.
In 2003, David Bergman of Tel Aviv University's Department of Physics and Astronomy teamed with Mark Stockman of Georgia State University to create the theory of a "surface plasmon amplification by stimulated emission of radiation," or more simply, a "Spaser." This device, they predicted, would use plasmons instead of photons to get around the size limitations of traditional lasers. Now, researchers have developed the Spaser into a practical tool that could change medicine, information technology and other industries.
At the core of the Spaser, concentrated plasmons
allow for strong emissions from a tiny space (source: Nature).
Spasers are considered key in the developing field of nanophotonics (or nanoptics). According to the researchers, the invention could lead to powerful new machines and methods. A Spaser-based microscope, for example, could be 10 times more powerful than today's microscopes; according to the engineers, such a device could be used to view extremely small features, such as individual genetic base pairs in DNA.
The researchers also hope that the Spaser will lead to massive changes in information technology. Computers that communicate with light instead of electrons, for example, could be 100 times faster than today's machines. The Spaser could even lead to radical improvements in capturing solar energy.
"It rhymes with laser, but our Spaser is different," said David Bergman in the Tel Aviv University release. "Based on pure physics, it's like a laser, but much, much, much smaller."
Unlike the traditional laser, the Spaser uses surface plasma waves. While visible light is limited by the size of its wavelength, the wavelengths of plasma can be significantly smaller than the light produced. This means that a Spaser can be less than 100 nanometers long, according to Bergman.
In 2009, a multi-institutional team comprising researchers from Norfolk State University, Purdue University and Cornell University created a working prototype of the Spaser. Their device, the smallest laser at the time, was just 44 nanometers across.
"The Spaser works about a thousand times faster than the fastest transistor, while having the same nanoscale size," Mark Stockman told Technology Review about the 2009 prototype. "This opens up the possibility to build ultrafast amplifiers, logic elements and microprocessors working about a thousand times faster than conventional silicon-based microprocessors."
Stockman and Bergman currently share the patent for the Spaser. The research team is aiming to commercialize their product, which they hope will lead to rapid advancements in the development of nano-sized devices.
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