Philippe Matthews Show Guru Advice, Author Reviews, Tech Reviews, Entertainment News

Active optical fibers with silicon photonic chips can carry a lot more information for data interconnect than copper cables. Silicon photonics can also be the material of choice for wiring 'lab-on-a-chip' devices — however, the construction of such devices is not without its challenges.

(PhysOrg.com) -- A new chemical technique for depositing a non-crystalline form of silicon into the long, ultra-thin pores of optical fibers has been developed by an international team of scientists in the United States and the United Kingdom. The technique, which is the first of its kind to use high-pressure chemistry for making well-developed films and wires of this particular kind of silicon semiconductor, will help scientists to make more-efficient and more-flexible optical fibers. The findings, by an international team led by John Badding, a professor of chemistry at Penn State University, will be published in a future print edition of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

(PhysOrg.com) -- The ability to manipulate light and fluids on a single chip, broadly called "optofluidics," has led to such technologies as liquid-crystal displays and liquid-filled optical fibers for fast data transfer. Optofluidics is now also on the cusp of improving such green technologies as solar-powered bioreactors, say Cornell researchers.