Bypassing fundamental speed limits of ultrafast light-based plasmonic modulator computing components

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1128914

"electron-phonon relaxation tail causes persistent atomic lattice heating/ limits data switching to ps-speed recovery... overcome using metastructured silver–single-crystal silicon nanodisk antenna spatially co-localizing light energy deposition directly with metal-semiconductor transfer boundary... shortens hot-carrier transport pathways/ activates interface-dominated electronic extraction occurring before lattice thermalization begins... lossless relaxation pathway modulation time constants of just 37 +- 9 fs"