A team of researchers from Institute of Telecommunications and Multimedia Applications at the Polytechnic University of Valencia has developed a new technique that optimizes the design of optical chips used in telecommunications equipment.

Of the two manufacturing systems commonly used, electron beam lithography is the most precise though it suffers from being slow; photolithography using masks is faster, but less precise. The technique developed by the team at ITEAM allows the latter system to be used with the same precision as electron beam lithography, with the advantage of fast production and much lower cost.

This design technique and these chips can be used in telecommunications in general, as well as for computing applications such as the interconnection between different cores of processors. For this reason, according to ITEAM, such a device will soon be in our homes, allowing us to have significantly more powerful processors at prices similar to those paid today.

The work of the researchers from Valencia was published last November in the Optical Society of America’s (OSA) prestigious magazine Optics Express, one of the most widely-followed in the optics field.