New Way to Control Light with Electric Fields

Researchers from North Carolina State University have discovered a technique for controlling light with electric fields.

“Our method is similar to the technique used to provide the computing capabilities of computers,” says Linyou Cao, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering at NC State and corresponding author of a paper on the work. “In computers, an electric field is used to turn electric current on or off, which corresponds to logic 1 and logic 0, the basis of binary code. With this new discovery, a light may be controlled to be strong or weak, spread or focused, pointing one direction or others by an electric field.”

Cao and his collaborators have developed a technique that allows them to change the refractive index for visible light in some semiconductor materials by 60 percent – two orders of magnitude better than previous results. The researchers worked with a class of atomically thin semiconductor materials called transition metal dichalcogenide monolayers. Specifically, they worked with thin films of molybdenum sulfide, tungsten sulfide and tungsten selenide.

Read more at North Carolina State University

Image Credit: North Carolina State University

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