Alexander Gumennik, assistant professor of Intelligent Systems Engineering and director of ISE Fibers and Additive Manufacturing Enabled Systems Lab, and Camila Faccini de Lima, a Ph.D. student in Intelligent Systems Engineering, have co-authored a paper that will appear in the prestigious Nature Communications.
The paper, “Multimaterial fiber as a physical simulator of a capillary instability,” addresses finding a way to make a liquid jet break up into drops in a predictable way, and use that method to create data-processing fibers for the future internet communication needs.
It substantiates the Very Large-Scale Integration for fibers, an IU-patented (https://patents.google.com/patent/US11692855B2/en) approach for impairing fiber optics with the capabilities of a data processor, which will likely play a huge role in developing the Internet of Tomorrow.
“It’s discovering an ordered regime in a generally chaotic capillary breakup of a liquid jet into separate droplets,” Gumennik said, “and using this predictable regime in application to molten fibers to design and manufacture optoelectronics and photonics inside the fiber optics needed for incorporation of emerging computing platforms, such as quantum and neuromorphic, into the Internet of Tomorrow.”
The 21st Century transformational leap in data processing and distribution hardware has resulted in ever-increasing demands for computational power. That has led to new hardware platforms ranging from spintronic and photonic to neuromorphic and quantum that utilize vast amounts of power and data processing.
Connecting these diverse platforms into one harmonized network requires advanced fiber optics capable of handling those demands. Imparting efficient data transduction and transformation capabilities into fiber optics will likely require integrating photonic and optoelectronic devices and systems into the fiber itself.
The goal is to substantiate the long-haul network interconnects meeting the demand of the Internet of Tomorrow by integrating the emerging computational platforms. FAMES Lab is developing a set of material processing techniques that will help transform fiber optics.
A provisional patent application describing the ways in which the paper’s findings enable design and fabrication of fiber optoelectronics was recently filed.
A virtual tour of the FAMES Lab showcases its facility and equipment.
Nature Communications is an open-access, multidisciplinary journal dedicated to publishing high-quality research in biological, chemical, physical, mathematical, health, Earth, social applied and engineering sciences. It publishes papers that reflect important advances in those fields.
It is part of Springer Nature, one of the world’s leading global research, educational and professional publishers.