Graphene Filter Could Speed Up Wireless Communication x10

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Researchers at the University of Geneva and Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland may have found a way to make wireless communications 10 times faster than current. They’ve developed a graphene filter for microchips that could potentially dramatically increase the rate of data transmission.

The researchers fabricated what is known as a non-reciprocal isolator, which filters backwards radiation. Normally, wave propagation is bidirectional – meaning, if a wave can go one way, it can go back to the source as well. There are certain materials that allow for unidirectional propagation, such as ferrite, but signals passing through them lose much of their strength, making them unviable for data transmission.

“Graphene, to the best of our knowledge, outperforms any other candidate in the terahertz range,” said Michele Tamagnone, a PhD student at EPFL.

While this work won’t do much for the current crop of devices, it paves the way for the future. Devices nowadays communicate in the gigahertz range (or optical frequencies), but terahertz will allow data transmission at much, much faster speeds. What’s holding back the technology is, to put it simply, a lack of technology. Research is accumulating fast, but there are no terahertz analogues to contemporary tech.

“Our chip partially solves this problem. It’s the first building block of this kind (an isolator in the range 1 THz to 10 THz), which solves an important open challenge,” says Tamagnone.

Tamagnone says that while the team’s work is focused on terahertz communication, it could have application for devices operating in the microwave range – that is, today’s communication devices.

With the price of graphene decreasing, this could become a viable solution sooner rather than later.