David Walba
Present and future information technology requires ever faster data transmission rates, but conventional circuitry has serious limitations. In his Perspective, Walba describes a new generation of electrooptical devices based on liquid crystals. These 'spatial light modulators' can be integrated with silicon circuits to offer compact, ultrafast optical processing of data.
The author is in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the Optoelectronic Computing Systems Center, University of Colorado, Campus Box 215, Boulder, CO 80309-0215, USA, and is a cofounder and member of the board of Displaytech, Inc., 2200 Central Avenue, Boulder, CO 80303, USA. E-mail: walba@colorado,edu