New device modulates visible light--without dimming it--with the smallest footprint and lowest power consumption

Over the past several decades, researchers have moved from using electric currents to manipulating light waves in the near-infrared range for telecommunications applications such as high-speed 5G networks, biosensors on a chip, and driverless cars. This research area, known as integrated photonics, is fast evolving and investigators are now exploring the shorter--visible--wavelength range to develop a broad variety of emerging applications. These include chip-scale LIDAR (light detection and ran...