Beetle holds key to optical computing

BOFFINS FROM UTAH reckon a shiny green beetle from Brazil could provide the perfect "photonic crystals" needed to build super-fast optical computers.

Scientists have, for years, been trying to come up with photonic crystals able to bend and manipulate light in such a way that they would be able to form tiny laser beams, creating a light source for optical chips. So far, they have been unable to do so.

Now researchers in Utah seem to have discovered exactly the diamond-like photonic crystal structures they seek, on the back of the inch-long Brazilian weevil beetle Lamprocyphus augustus.

Michael Bartl, assistant professor of chemistry and adjunct assistant professor of physics at the University of Utah, along with chemistry doctoral student Jeremy Galusha noted, "nature has simple ways of making structures and materials that are still unobtainable with our million-dollar instruments and engineering strategies."

Certain colours of light pass through photonic crystals at different speeds. Others are reflected altogether. In the Brazilian beetles, the bright green colour is green light reflected by the exoskeleton’s photonic crystals.

Photonic crystals are crucial when it comes to developing optical computers which, instead of running on electricity and using electrons, run on photons of light. Currently, visible wavelengths of light, as well as near infra-red wavelengths are able to beam data through fibre-optic cables, but this data then has to be converted into electricity for a computer to understand. A computer without integrated circuits or chips would revolutionise computing. "an optical computer could do in seconds what regular computers need years for", said Bartl.

Boffins would also be able to use photonic crystals to make solar cells more efficient by amplifying light and speeding up chemical reactions.

Before animal rights campaigners and environmentalists get themselves all in a tizz, the beetle’s actual scales can’t be used in actual devices, because the material the exoskeleton is made of, Chitin, is not semiconducting, doesn’t bend light to the extent needed and is also not stable enough to be used for long periods of time. This means that boffins are now working on synthetic designs of the beetle’s crystals out of transparent semiconductor material.

But despite the discovery being a breakthrough for optical computers, it is believed that results could still be a while off.

The discovery will be published later on this week in the scientific journal, Physical Review. Once they've ironed all the bugs out. µ

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