The discovery by scientists at Harvard could have major implications for computing which until now has relied on data transmission using electrons.
Typically, computer chips modulate electrons to transmit and process data using high and low current to represent the computer language of ones and zeroes.
However, the research team from Harvard’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) has found a way to modulate acoustic waves to do the same job.
"Acoustic waves are promising as on-chip information carriers for both quantum and classical information processing but the development of acoustic integrated circuits has been hampered by the inability to control acoustic waves in a low-loss, scalable manner," said Marko Loncar, Tiantsai Lin Professor of Electrical Engineering at Harvard SEAS and senior author of the study.
"In this work, we showed we can control acoustic waves on an integrated lithium niobate platform, bringing us one step closer to an acoustic integrated circuit."
The team used the unique properties of lithium niobate to build an on-chip, electro-acoustic modulator to control the acoustic waves propagating in on-chip waveguides, Harvard said. By the applying an electric field, the modulator was able to control the phase, amplitude, and frequency of the acoustic waves on chip.
“Previous acoustic devices were passive but now we have the electrical modulation to actively tune the acoustic devices, which enables a lot of functionalities in the future development of microwave signal processing using these types of acoustic devices,” said Linbo Shao, a co-author of the paper.
The research was published in Nature Electronics.