This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: A tiny device that can be reprogrammed using a laser could lead to adaptable devices for computing, imaging and telecommunications. Most devices are built to perform a particular job.
If you want them to do something different, you generally need to replace a component, rewire the system or manufacture a new one. For example, every time you ask a large language model like ChatGPT or Claude a question, many electrical signals race through computer chips, carrying information and performing calculations. This takes energy, and lots of it.
Scientists are always searching for faster and potentially more energy-efficient ways to process information. One possible solution is to replace some electrical signals with light. An international team of researchers led by the ARC Center for Transformative Meta-Optical Systems (TMOS) at The Australian National University combined an ultrathin optical surface with liquid crystals, the material used in many electronic displays.
The team collaborated with researchers at Nottingham Trent University in the U.K. and Friedrich Schiller University Jena in Germany. When a laser was shone on the device, it rotated the liquid crystal molecules and changed the way the surface interacted with light. The paper is published in the journal Science Advances.
Lead researcher Ziwei Yang says the response or function of a static metasurface cannot be changed after fabrication. "But by shining light on the liquid crystal, we have another way to tune that function without fabricating the device again." The device is a metasurface, a thin material covered with structures smaller than the width of a human hair. These tiny structures are designed to control the properties of light—such as color, strength and direction.
The device can be imagined as a miniature road system for light, determining where it can travel and what happens to it along the way. However, for most metasurfaces, these 'roads' are permanently fixed once the device is manufactured. "With a static metasurface, you cannot change its response or its function after you fabricate it," Yang says.
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