Scientists in China say they have developed an optical fibre technology that could pave the way for real-time endoscopies of nerve cells in the brain, as well as faster next-gen telecommunications.
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They said the super-thin fibre – running on an optical neural network – could carry tens of thousands of times more optical information than traditional single-mode fibres.
That means it could be used for high-speed optical communication, quantum information processing, and micro-photonic devices.
The researchers from the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Southeast University in Nanjing as well as the University of Technology Sydney published their findings in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Photonics on Friday.
Optical fibres, or fibre-optic cables, are made from thin strands of plastic or glass. They transmit data as pulses of light at high speed.
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The two main types of fibres are single-mode fibres – preferred for long-distance communications and high-speed data transmission – and multimode fibres, which are mainly used locally such as within a building.
While single-mode fibres allow only one mode of light to travel through at a time and often use a laser as the light source, multimode fibres have a wider core and allow several modes of light – from inexpensive LEDs – to pass through by bouncing off their edges.