A new polymer-based technology developed for the nano-photonics market by researchers from Tel Aviv University could make computers and the Internet a hundred times faster, says lead researcher Dr Koby Scheuer of the university’s School of Electrical Engineering.

Reported in the journal Optics Express, Scheuer’s optical data filter is formed from nanometer-sized grooves embedded in a plastic substrate. When used in fibre optic cable switches, the filters could make communication devices (telephones, cable TV and Internet interfaces) smaller, more flexible and more powerful.

To avoid bottlenecks of information in the fibre optic systems which are being installed in increasing numbers, incoming data must be separated into different channels. This requires switches to modulate incoming light signals so as to filter the data and encode it into usable information.

According to the Tel Aviv team, the new devices can perform this at “unimaginable” speed, quality and cost. They could be in widespread use in five or ten years time.

The plastic-based switches would replace difficult-to-fabricate and expensive semi-conductor devices. Semiconductors, grown on crystals in sterile laboratories and processed in special ovens, take days and sometimes months to manufacture and are delicate and inflexible.

By contrast, the material for the polymer switches comes in a user-friendly liquid solution. Using a method called “stamping,” almost any laboratory can make optical devices using the silicon rubber mould developed at Tel Aviv, says Scheuer. The silicon rubber mould, Silicone soap mould is scored with nano-sized grooves, invisible to the naked eye. A polymer solution is poured over the mould to replicate the groove configuration in minutes.

The biggest hurdle to take-up of the filters, according to Scheuer, lies in convincing the communications industry that polymers are stable materials.

The device can also be used in the gyros of planes, ships and rockets; inserted into cell phones; and incorporated into flexible virtual reality gloves so that doctors could "operate" via computer networks over large distances.