Deoxy ribonucleic acid - DNA

You might be wondering what does DNA have to do in Optoelectronics. I recently read that DNA based materials  had optical properties and could be used in photonics in various applications. The double helix structure of DNA is awesome. Apart from being used in cloning, genetic mapping, and crime investigation, DNA is now appearing in clean rooms of semiconductor and thin-film coating facilities. It turns out that DNA, when concentrated into a thin-film bio-polymer through reactions with surfactants, can be used to create improved optoelectronic devices.

  Fig DNA as material for synthesis into bio-polymer thin film that can be used in many optoelectronic devices

Making DNA biopolymer into a commercial material is the aim of researchers like Steckl, who are attracted by optical and electrical properties of thin films of DNA biopolymer.
“These DNA-based materials possess unique electromagnetic and optical properties that no other known polymers have: low optical loss over a broad wavelength (350 to 2000 nm) and five orders of magnitude more conductivity,” says James G. Grote, principal electronics research engineer at the Air Force Research Laboratory Materials and Manufacturing. I am Looking forward to hear from you all about your findings and opinion about the topic.

Optoelectronics will take over the future

Now that you are reading this right now reflects that you are interested in knowing about what the future technology revolution would be like, and what all are the suitable career options. Electronics dominated the last few decades and VLSI made it possible to built the computers as that are now available. But, however the requirements of speed and performance of computers is ever increasing. This is where a new technology will be essential. This is because there is a limit in the speed possible using electronics. This is because electrons are used in an electronic system to operate. Light has got the maximum velocity and hence it is obvious that it is fastest in processing. However, using light to process data and perform optical computing is an idea that has come up long before the time of computers. The reason why the task of computing was done using electrons was that no technique was known to make light to compute. With the invention of LASER and realization of simple logic gates, optical computing has become an area of research. The spark has already begun. A cost effective fully functional optical transistor is a challenge. A lot of realization of optical transistors have already been made. But, the cost needs to be reduced and performance to be optimized. All of you who are interested in taking up new interesting fields of study should definitely choose this stream of study. I have taken Optoelectronics and Communication as a part of my M. Tech course. The scope of Optics is not only limited to computing, but sensing, bio-cal applications using Bio-photonics, high speed communication and so on. The reason for me to start this blog is to guide aspiring students who are taking up this filed of study to get basic awareness of the possibilities in the field. I would also be posting interesting projects and seminars in optoelectronics. I will include seminars, ebooks, pdf and interesting readings on biomedical diagnostic application of photonics, optic fiber sensing, industrial photonics, bio photonics and integrated optics. Digital Optical Signal Processing is an intresting area where a lot of research is being done.