{"id":244615,"date":"2026-09-29T01:34:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-29T06:34:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/laser-temporarily-reprograms-ultrathin-optical-device-without-electrodes"},"modified":"2026-09-29T01:34:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-29T06:34:15","slug":"laser-temporarily-reprograms-ultrathin-optical-device-without-electrodes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/laser-temporarily-reprograms-ultrathin-optical-device-without-electrodes","title":{"rendered":"Laser temporarily reprograms ultrathin optical device without electrodes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/laser-temporarily-reprograms-ultrathin-optical-device-without-electrodes2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A tiny device that can be reprogrammed using a laser could lead to adaptable devices for computing, imaging and telecommunications. Most devices are built to perform a particular job. If you want them to do something different, you generally need to replace a component, rewire the system or manufacture a new one. For example, every time you ask a large language model like ChatGPT or Claude a question, many electrical signals race through computer chips, carrying information and performing calculations. This takes energy, and lots of it.<\/p>\n<p>Scientists are always searching for faster and potentially more energy-efficient ways to process information. One possible solution is to replace some electrical signals with light.<\/p>\n<p>An international team of researchers led by the ARC Center for Transformative Meta-Optical Systems (TMOS) at The Australian National University combined an ultrathin optical surface with liquid crystals, the material used in many electronic displays. The team collaborated with researchers at Nottingham Trent University in the U.K. and Friedrich Schiller University Jena in Germany.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A tiny device that can be reprogrammed using a laser could lead to adaptable devices for computing, imaging and telecommunications. Most devices are built to perform a particular job. If you want them to do something different, you generally need to replace a component, rewire the system or manufacture a new one. For example, every [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1635,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-244615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-materials","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244615\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}