Translator: Madina Juarez Reviewer: Denise RQ
Each of you might have being in that awkward situation
when you leave the house, forget your cell phone,
and begin to helplessly feel your pockets and feeling vulnerable.
You've got keys, you've got money, but no Internet.
The entry of information medium, and information technology
made us who we are now, we exist in the information world.
We can't live without it.
Naturally, since we live in the world of information we want to get its product.
Internet offers us a wide selection.
Our demands to have more speed.
We are glad to share our findings with you.
Our colleagues from Danish Technology University
late this fall, sent along an optic fiber
a record breaking 43 terabytes in one second.
So it's clear to you, that would equal 10,000 movies in high resolution,
transferred from one server to another in one second.
Otherwise, with the entire world.
Million users and each has 43 megabytes per second.
Millions have access to high resolution photos and online TV.
But what's behind it, besides the speed? Internet, getting online?
Let's look at household appliances.
To me, a smartphone and a fridge are both household appliances.
We use them at home.
Let's take a look at how much energy is used by them in a year.
So, class A++ fridge consumes 124 kilowatts per year.
A cell phone, a smartphone. If not used a lot, 360.
Essentially, this equals to what three refrigerators would consume.
But a smartphone won't be even cooling down your beer.
Do you see what's happening?
Data flow, information transport requires more energy
that transport of people, goods, clothes, fabric altogether.
Information is weightless. Then why such huge energy demands?
It's not due to nature of the device.
Today's iPhone consumes 5 kilowatts per year.
Little. They are enhanced.
It's because when you pulled out a smartphone
and turned it on by slightly touching it,
you activated a vast number of stations, servers, cloud technology
that demand energy,
because every second, every minute they wait for you to turn on.
So, what do we have?
Last year, Internet ate a slice
of world electric energy pie, 10% of it.
And this will keep growing.
Much faster than today.
Because we need more flow and electronics,
the science of movement of electrons reached its capacity.
It can no longer keep up with growing energy demands of appliances.
So, what can we do?
Let's switch movement of electrons to movement of photons.
Photons are particles of lights. They are almost the same as electrons.
With one exception. They are not electrically charged.
This means that they are hard to work with.
When we have electronics, electrons moved, these light particles.
They move fast and transfer information.
In a given field they stop and turn, that's it. Not with photons.
Take a look, I took this picture...
I would say, of course, that I made it several days ago,
but according to our host I flew in yesterday.
Sunny day.
We like to take in light that forms flecks of sunlight on the walls.
It's so cool, we feel uplifted.
Now think of an image where we want to preserve it,
like strawberries in a bag.
Collect all the photons in our imagination and put them in a bag, tie the bag,
place it in a fridge or somewhere else.
Open the bag in the evening and enjoy.
Not the image I came up with, I can enlarge it and hang it on the wall.
I won't have those emotions. I know it's just a picture.
I want to see sunlight.
So, to capture photons at this level
and keep them for several hours is not a problem.
The problem we have
is that at this level optic fibers solve tasks.
Now we want to examine the level of our cell phone.
Cell phone is just an electronic device. It has moving electrons.
You see the task is to make photons move.
They fly at light speed, they are so fast, and weightless.
So, we can transfer more data through them with less energy expenditure.
Same problems is that we can't just stuff an optic fiber inside.
It won't work.
Because, as I mentioned before, photons are not charged.
Imagine that you want to harness something.
A photon, or an electron.
When an electron is charged, it, in fact, has these two hooks.
We came with a harness, and we can control it.
But a photon is smooth all over,
no dents, nothing, not try putting the harness on it.
So, we need something else.
I am now going to present you with a few examples
of how we are trying to control photons.
Take a look at the first example, we take glass.
We know that glass is transparent. Let's say, a window glass.
We drill holes in it. The holes let in air.
If we drill the holes a certain way, in an orderly way,
then these two transparent mediums, glass and air
appear together opaque to photons.
You make a mirror,
and you can make a path from these mirrors, here it is.
And photons will follow this path, nowhere else, but forward.
Second example involves color. It's a much simpler example.
The surface might have some grooves, like those on a CD.
You've all seen color play, rainbow sparkle, it's cool and beautiful.
What can we do to stop colors from changing?
I will you a picture.
This was done by a Korean professor, Jung Shin.
This deeply saturated blue color
is actually due to the presence of glass.
This is glass. Transparent and colorless.
In addition, it's 2 microns thick. That's why this thing looks like a cloth.
It bends.
This deep blue color is there
only because there are some tiny sticks and cones.
And this color is the same color as this butterfly's wings.
By the way, the butterfly was the prototype.
The structure of its wings served as a prototype in creating this structure.
Let's move on.
We can take plastic material and give it a color, a shade.
We don't have to drill holes to do that, we will apply particles to the plastic.
These small, aluminum particles are nano size.
We're getting closer to the concept of nanophotonics.
Because these nano size particles are very, very small: 10, 20, 30 nanometers.
Depending how densely we'll place them in here, we'll give color to plastic.
It's not a pigment.
The plastic will be more of a green color,
and the toys made our of this plastic material will look like this.
You can draw on it.
If we continue with structuralization,
understand that this is three-dimensional structuring.
Imagine thin stripes like a sandwich,
first dielectric, second dielectric, 10-20 nanometers thick.
When the light hits them the photons rush to this structure,
but they can't find it.
They don't see it, since it's tiny. Kind of when you don't feel a glass.
If you look under a microscope the glass looks bumpy.
But your fingers don't feel it.
Same here, the photon rushes to it recognizing homogenous structure.
If you mix two dielectrics, the dielectric knows it.
But if every second layer, or every first layer will be, let's say, gold colored,
then the structure will have unusual properties for photons.
When it comes from one side, the photon will see a piece of metal.
What will the photon do? It will reflect.
When it approaches it from the other side
it'll see that it's a piece of dielectric, and pass through.
In other words, we get this harness, we can slow down the photon, or reflect.
Or let it pass. There is more if we go on.
It will be more like science fiction.
We can play around with light refraction.
From school physics, if you remember,
when you build something according to the light refraction law
then the ray should go further, but in this case it's different.
This is our structured prism.
Take a look, it didn't just refract the light differently,
it inverted rainbow colors.
It put them in the opposite order.
Of course, for now this is just a theory, a very profound theory.
Conceptual.
But nanophotonics is a science that studies the photon movements,
and their control using nanoworld language,
over very short distances.
It's catching speed and moving with driving force.
And if we were to discuss timeframe,
I hope, you remember a great movie "Electronic's Adventures".
35 years ago. Two characters,
one being real boy, and the second a robot, Electronic.
If I were to film its remake
then my main character would be robot Electronic.
And the fantasy character would be Photonic, the robot.
Now, onto the next question. All right, and the next remake?
When should we expect to see Photonic, the robot?
Have patience, around 20 years.
Thank you.
(Applause)