All-optical switching could allow dramatic speed increases in telecommunications by eliminating the need to convert photonic signals to electronic signals — and back — for switching. All-optical processing could also facilitate photonic computers with similar speed advances.

Details of these materials — and the design approach behind them — were reported February 18th in Science Express, the rapid online publication of the journal Science. Conducted at the Georgia Institute of Technology, the research was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Office of Naval Research (ONR).

“This work provides proof that at least from a molecular point of view, we can identify and produce materials that have the right properties for all-optical processing,” said Seth Marder, a professor in the Georgia Tech School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and co-author of the paper. “This opens the door for looking at this issue in an entirely different way.”

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