Scotland produces very wee optical switch
As Advent calendars and Jewish bibles make the 'small ' festive headlines a team of researchers at the University of St Andrews demonstrates one of the smallest optical switches ever made.
The team, based at the School of Physics and Astronomy lead by Professor T F Krauss, has used photonic crystal technology to reduce the size of the switch to only a few wavelengths of light.
Reported in a posting of Optics Letters, the switch is aimed at applications in telecommunications, where the researchers foresee its use in routing of optical signals. The technology may also be used in small consumer devices that connect every home or office to an optical fibre and supply high data rates, including television on demand.
The work is part of the UK Silicon Photonics project, a consortium led by Surrey University, that has received a funding boost from EPSRC, with £1.4m awarded to St. Andrews.
The group aims to address the increasing need for optical components at all levels of the communications network that carries the ever-increasing flow of data over the internet. By focussing on silicon as the material platform, 
the photonic devices developed by the group can be mass-produced in a similar way as computer chips for the microelectronics industry
Web: http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/
From left, clockwise)Professor Thomas Krauss; Dr William Whelan-Curtin; Dr Tom White; Dr Daryl Beggs