The silver serves as a kind of intermediary between the gold particles while not dissipating energy. Capture: Liedl/Hohmann (NIM)
Tomorrow's computers will run on light, and gold nanoparticle chains show much promise as light conductors. Now LMU scientists have demonstrated how tiny spots of silver could markedly reduce energy consumption in light-based computation. Today's computers are faster and smaller than ever before. The latest generation of transistors will have structural features with dimensions of only 10 nanometers. If computers are to become even faster and at the same time more energy efficient at these minuscule scales, they will probably need to process information using light particles instead of electrons. This is referred to as "optical computing". Fiber-optic networks already use light to transport data over long distances at high speed and with minimum loss.
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