(Press-News.org) As fast as modern electronics have become, they could be much faster if their operations were based on light, rather than electricity. Fiber optic cables already transport information at the speed of light; to do computations on that information without translating it back to electric signals will require a host of new optical components.
Engineering researchers at the University of Utah have now developed such a device—one that can be adjusted on the fly to give light different degrees of circular polarization. Because information can be stored in a property of light known as chirality, the researchers’ device could serve as a multifunctional, reconfigurable component of an optical computing system.
Led by Weilu Gao, assistant professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, and Jichao Fan, a Ph.D. candidate in his lab at the John and Marcia Price College of Engineering, a study demonstrating the device was published in the journal Nature Communications.
Chiral light refers to electromagnetic waves that exhibit handedness; they can be either left-handed or right-handed. This “handedness” arises from the rotation of the magnetic fields as the light propagates, creating a spiral structure.
“Traditional chiral optics were like carved stone—beautiful but frozen,” Gao said. “This made them not useful for applications requiring real-time control, like reconfigurable optical computing or adaptive sensors.”
“We’ve created ‘living’ optical matter that evolves with electrical pulses,” Fan said, “thanks to our aligned-carbon-nanotube-phase-change-material heterostructure that merges light manipulation and memory into a single scalable platform.”
This “heterostructure” consists of a stack of multiple different thin films, including a collection of aligned carbon nanotubes with different orientations. Other films in the stack consist of germanium-antimony-tellurium, a well-known “phase-change material” or PCM. An electrical pulse along the carbon nanotube layer introduces heat, which in turn causes the PCM layer’s internal structure to transition from amorphous to crystalline.
“The carbon nanotubes simultaneously act as chiral optical elements and transparent electrodes for PCM switching—eliminating the need for separate control components,” Fan said.
Critically, this change modifies the heterostructure’s circular dichroism, which means it can be made to absorb different types of circularly polarized light at different strengths. The research team’s advances in manufacturing techniques and artificial-intelligence-assisted design enabled these layers to be assembled into a stacked heterostructure without degrading their individual optical properties.
Once assembled, the layers selectively reduce the amount of left- or right-circularly polarized light that passes through them, depending on the state of the PCM layer. And because that phase change can be initiated by an electrical pulse, the structure’s overall circular dichroism can be adjusted in real-time.
The researchers were able to achieve this on the wafer-scale, because of the scalable manufacturing of aligned carbon nanotubes and phase-change-material films.
Being able to modify the device’s circular dichroism gives researchers fine-grained control over which direction circularly polarized light twists, meaning its “handedness” can be used as memory in an optical circuit. In addition to light’s speed advantage over electricity, there are additional properties of light in which information can be stored in parallel.
“By adding circular dichroism as an independent parameter, we create an orthogonal information channel,” Gao said. “Adjusting it does not interfere with other properties like amplitude or wavelength.”
####
The study was published May 14 in Nature Communications under the title, “A Programmable Wafer-scale Chiroptical Heterostructure of Twisted Aligned Carbon Nanotubes and Phase Change Materials.” Coauthors include Gao lab members Ruiyang Chen, Minhan Lou, Haoyu Xie, Benjamin Hillam and Jacques Doumani. Yingheng Tang contributed to the study, as did Nina Hong of the J.A. Woollam Company.
The research was supported by the National Science Foundation through Grants No. 2230727, No. 2235276, No. 2316627 and No. 2321366.
END
(MEMPHIS, Tenn. and ST. LOUIS, MO.– May 28, 2025) Scientists from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and Washington University in St. Louis report mechanistic insights into the role of biomolecular condensation in the development of neurodegenerative disease. The collaborative research, published in Molecular Cell, focused on the interactions that drive the formation of condensates versus the formation of amyloid fibrils and how these relate to stress granules. Stress granules are biomolecular condensates that form under conditions of cellular stress and have been previously implicated as drivers of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis ...
A new study led by UC San Francisco researchers finds that chronic cannabis use — whether it’s smoked or consumed in edible form — is associated with significant cardiovascular risks.
The report, published May 28 in JAMA Cardiology, found that people who regularly used marijuana in either form had reduced blood vessel function that was comparable to tobacco smokers. Vascular function in those who used cannabis by either means was reduced roughly by half compared to those who did not use it.
Decreased vascular function is associated with ...
Results from a clinical trial led by researchers from Queen Mary University of London, published today in JAMA, show that giving people with high blood pressure an injection every six months can lead to a meaningful, sustained reduction in their blood pressure.
The global trial, KARDIA-2, involved 663 people with high blood pressure whose condition wasn’t being well managed with their standard treatment.
In the trial, patients were given an injection of a new medication zilebesiran, alongside their standard blood pressure treatments. Researchers found ...
Irvine, Calif., May 28, 2025 — Many home healthcare agencies adopted telehealth services during the COVID-19 pandemic, but the absence of federal reimbursements for these services has led to an increasing number of providers discontinuing these options, a national survey conducted by the University of California, Irvine, and other institutions reveals. Results are published in Health Services Research.
The National Institute on Aging-funded study offers valuable insights into the role of telehealth ...
Involving communities in nature-based solutions to tackle urban climate and environmental challenges leads to innovation and multiple benefits, a study shows.
Participation of citizens in NBS projects leads to innovation in design and quality, as well as people gaining greater benefits from green and blue spaces (for access, recreation and health and wellbeing), researchers found. The study showed that involving communities.
Projects are also more likely to be successful in supporting nature renewal ...
Bethesda, MD (May 28, 2025) — Lawrence Kim, MD, AGAF, today begins his term as the 120th president of the AGA Institute. A leader in community-based practice, Dr. Kim is a partner at South Denver Gastroenterology, an independent gastroenterology practice in Colorado.
In his 27 years in private practice, Dr. Kim has helped diversify and innovate his group. He developed a part-time partnership model, making South Denver Gastroenterology a leader in recruiting women gastroenterologists, who now comprise one-third of the practice. He incorporated ...
New Haven, Conn. — As rising global temperatures alter ecosystems worldwide, animal species usually have two choices: adapt to changing local conditions or flee to a cooler clime. Ecologists have long assumed that the world’s bird species were best equipped to respond to the pressures of climate change simply because they have the option of flying to higher altitudes or towards global poles.
But a new Yale study finds that few bird species are able to escape the realities of a warming world.
The findings were published May 28 in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.
“They can’t move fast enough or far enough to ...
CORNELL UNIVERSITY MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
FOR RELEASE: May 28, 2025
Kaitlyn Serrao
607-882-1140
kms465@cornell.edu
Electric buses struggle in the cold, Cornell researchers find
ITHACA, N.Y. – Cornell University researchers have released new insights on a pilot program involving all-electric buses in Ithaca – with implications for cities, schools and other groups that are considering the electrification of their fleets, as well as operators, policymakers and manufacturers.
The study is the first to assess and analyze electric buses’ performance in the northeastern U.S., with an unprecedented dataset that covers significant ...
Neurons deep in the brain not only help to initiate movement—they also actively suppress it, and with astonishing precision. This is the conclusion of a new study by researchers at the University of Basel and the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research (FMI), published in the journal Nature. The findings are especially relevant for better understanding neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s disease.
Reaching for an apple or bringing a spoon to the mouth—these seemingly simple actions rely on highly complex processes in the brain. A key ...
About The Study: This cross-sectional study found that chronic cannabis smoking and tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) ingestion were associated with endothelial dysfunction similar to that observed in tobacco smokers, although apparently occurring via distinct mechanisms.
Corresponding author: To contact the corresponding author, Matthew L. Springer, Ph.D., email matt.springer@ucsf.edu.
To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/
(doi: 10.1001/jamacardio.2025.1399)
Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions ...
