TECH

Chips that will surpass 5G technology begin to emerge

Photological topological insulators
5G technology is already a reality, so that engineers and researchers are already turning to the next generation of equipment, which should meet the next levels of data transfer.
And some teams are well on their way, as Yihao Yang and his colleagues at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and Osaka University in Japan have now demonstrated.
They already have the first chip "post 5G" ready, built with the concept of "photonic topological insulators".
Topological insulators are emerging materials - mere laboratory curiosities a few years ago - that have properties on their surface that are different from the properties on the inside. And photonics are materials capable of handling light, whether for processing, storage or data transfer.
In simple terms, photonic topological insulators allow light waves to be conducted on the surface and edges of the material, like a train following a railroad, which is much faster than if it had to pass through the material.
When light travels along these "tracks", it can be redirected through sharp corners, and its flow will remain undisturbed even if it finds imperfections in the material.
The tracks for the light have a slightly different design than the train tracks: The small silicon chip has a series of rows of triangular holes, with small triangles pointing in the opposite direction to larger triangles, so that the light waves become "topologically protected".



THz transmissions
The chip was able to transmit data using terahertz waves (THz) at a rate of 11 Gigabits per second (Gbit / s), which allowed for a sustained 4K video transmission, in addition to exceeding the theoretical limit of 10 Gbit / s of communications 5G.
According to the team, the application areas for THz interconnection technology will include data centers, IoT devices, processors with a greater number of cores and long-range communications, including telecommunications and wireless communication, such as Wi-Fi.

Bibliography:
Terahertz topological photonics for on-chip communication
Authors: Yihao Yang, Yuichiro Yamagami, Xiongbin Yu, Prakash Pitchappa, Julian Webber, Baile Zhang, Masayuki Fujita, Tadao Nagatsuma, Ranjan Singh