2026-01-27 22:00:03
More than 97 percent of the new cars Norwegians registered in November 2025 were electric, almost reaching the country’s goal of 100 percent. As a result, the government has begun removing some of the many carrots it used to encourage its successful EV transition. Cecilie Knibe Kroglund, state secretary in the country’s Ministry of Transport, reveals some of the challenges that come with success.
Cecilie Knibe Kroglund is the state secretary in Norway’s Ministry of Transport.
What were the important early steps to promote the EV switch?
Kroglund: Battery-electric vehicles have had exemptions from the 25 percent value-added tax and from the CO2- and weight-based registration tax that apply to combustion-engine vehicles. We used other tax incentives to encourage building charging stations on highways and in rural areas. Cities had the opportunity to exempt zero-emissions cars from toll roads. EV drivers also got reduced ferry fares, free parking, and access to bus lanes in many cities. The technology for the vehicles wasn’t that good at the start of the incentives program, but we had the taxes and incentives to make traditional passenger cars more expensive.
What were the biggest barriers, and how did policymakers overcome them?
Kroglund: Early on the technology was challenging. In summertime it was easy to fuel the EV, but in wintertime it’s double the use of energy. But the technology has improved a lot in the last five years.
The Norwegian tax exemptions on EVs were introduced before EVs came to market and were decisive in offsetting the early disadvantages of EVs compared to conventional cars, especially regarding comfort, vehicle size, and range. The rapid expansion of charging infrastructure along major corridors has also been important to overcome range anxiety.
How have private companies responded to government incentives?
Kroglund: I’m personally surprised that it went so well. This was a long-term commitment from the government, and the market has responded to that. Many Norwegian companies use EVs. The market for charging infrastructure is considered commercially viable and no longer needs financial support. However, we don’t see commercial-vehicle adoption going as fast as passenger vehicles, and we had the same goal. So we will have to review the goals, and we’ll have to review the incentives.
What unexpected new problems is Norway’s success creating?
Kroglund: The success of the passenger-vehicle policies mean EVs are in competition with public transport in the larger cities. Driving an EV remains much cheaper than driving a conventional car even without tax exemptions, and overall car use continues to rise. National, regional, and local governments must find different tools to promote walking, bicycling, and public transport because each city and region is different.
How applicable are these lessons to poorer or less well-administered countries and why?
Kroglund: We are different as countries. The geographies are different, and some countries have even bigger cities than our national population. This is not a policy for L.A., but what we see in Norway is that incentives work. However, tax incentives are only applicable in systems where effective taxation is established, which may not be the case in poorer countries. Other benefits, such as lower local emissions, only apply in places with lots of traffic.
The Norwegian experience shows that the economic incentives work, but it also shows that EVs work even in a country with cold weather.
This article appears in the February 2026 print issue as “Cecilie Knibe Kroglund.”
2026-01-27 03:00:03
“Until we get equality in education, we won’t have an equal society.” Spoken by Sonia Sotomayor, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, the words echo sharply across regions of the world where education is not guaranteed.
In the far northeastern corner of India—where villages are located in forests, on mountains, and along riverbanks—rural classrooms often operate with limited resources and even fewer opportunities. In districts such as Dhemaji, Assam, and the rural areas of Kharagpur and West Bengal, learning STEM often is just a distant dream.
I grew up in rural areas, and I saw how curiosity for science collided with poverty. Many students’ futures rely entirely on getting good grades to determine whether they are “worthy” of studying technical subjects later. One low grade on an exam can completely derail their future. More importantly, the absence of fully equipped laboratories, trained mentors, or exposure to STEM careers prevents many children from even being able to imagine an engineering career.
This is not just an educational issue. It is a matter of equity, directly aligned with U.N. Sustainable Development Goal 4, which aims to ensure a quality education for everyone.
The challenge is one that organizations such as IEEE, with its global technical community, are positioned to address. As technology becomes more imperative for everyday life, proficiency in electronics and programming is no longer optional—it is essential.
In December 2020 volunteers from the joint student chapter of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation–Microwave Theory and Techniques (IEEE AP-MTT) societies at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur launched a grassroots STEM outreach initiative with support from the IEEE Kharagpur Section.
I coordinated the initiative, which started when I was secretary of the student chapter. (I also was its vice chair and chair from 2020 to 2022.) Today I am a student ambassador for the IEEE MTT Society and the IEEE Young Professionals cochair of the IEEE Benelux MTT-AP joint chapter.
The program’s mission was simple: make hands-on electronics accessible to students who had never seen an Arduino board.
It began with training in the fundamentals of circuit building—LEDs, switches, breadboards, and batteries—and progressed into Arduino programming, automation, and sensor integration. The volunteers emphasized teamwork and friendly competitions to keep students engaged.
Through straightforward, relatable demonstrations, even complex topics such as electromagnetic concepts were explained in ways that the students could understand. The methodology not only increased understanding; it also sparked enthusiasm. In the first year, nearly 100 students from five schools benefited from the curriculum. The model is now known as Teach, Train, and Build (TTB). The initiative was recognized in 2021 with the IEEE Darrel Chong Student Activity Award.
TTB’s success led to additional funding from the IEEE Special Interest Group in Humanitarian Technology (SIGHT) program in 2022. This support from IEEE SIGHT enabled the establishment of three electronics hobby labs in underserved schools in Assam and West Bengal. The E-HuTS (electronic hobby clubs for technical development in rural schools) labs became permanent areas where students learn, experiment, and innovate.
The inauguration ceremony for the E-HuTS was a milestone moment. To further inspire students, Mrinal Mandal, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at IIT Kharagpur, gave a motivational talk in Bengali. The immediate outcome was that a group of students built a smart home using Arduino and wireless communication modules—something they never imagined they could do.
A similar transformation unfolded in Assam, where the TTB program was conducted entirely in the Assamese language, ensuring inclusivity for students with limited exposure to English. After completing the program, students proudly displayed their IEEE certificates.
One of the best aspects of the Assam program was the overwhelming participation of female students. Many of the young women were interacting with electronics for the first time—an inspiring step toward reducing gender disparity in the STEM field.
The more than 85 students who joined the hobby clubs in Assam and West Bengal developed almost three dozen projects including sensor-based alarms and environmental monitoring systems. The innovations weren’t replicas; they were original student-driven designs developed under the guidance of an IEEE mentor.
The initiative received a mention in the 2022 IEEE annual report and in an article in The Institute about the 2022 IEEE Education Week activities.
To ensure measurable progress of the program, the TTB team also implemented an evaluation matrix inspired by IEEE Humanitarian Technologies Board guidelines. The spreadsheet tracked outputs including the number of workshops held, hours delivered, and tools provided. It also measured results such as skills development, knowledge retention, student engagement, and long-term interest.
The structured methodology made the project replicable and transparent, providing a framework for future STEM outreach efforts.
The momentum from those initiatives helped spark the creation of IEEE communities in India. In 2023 the IEEE student branch at Dibrugarh University in Assam was formed, followed in 2024 by the university’s IEEE Microwave Theory and Technology Society student branch chapter. The groups have become centers of volunteer activity, ensuring long-term sustainability.
This year the TTB team organized TechnoFest: Udhvav 2.0, which brought engineers, scientists, lecturers, and members of the IEEE Young Professionals group together with students in the region. For many participants, it was their first opportunity to interact with real innovators and role models, turning the festival into an energizing platform of inspiration and exposure for rural youth.
Also in 2023, thanks to a grant from the IEEE MTT-S Ambassador program, IEEE volunteers visited Vidhya: The Living School, in Dhemaji. The session took place outdoors that October amid breathtaking natural landscapes, demonstrating that learning thrives even outside of a traditional infrastructure.
Another important milestone came in 2024, when the IEEE MTT-S SIGHT group provided a grant of US $1,000 to the school for its Vidhya Shakti project to install solar panels to provide uninterrupted and sustainable power to the school.
The student ambassadors met several distinguished figures who have made notable contributions to STEM education in India. They included Pranjal Buragohain, founder of the Vidhya school; chemical scientist Binoy Kumar Saikia, a recipient of the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award for Science and Technology in India; and astronomer Kishor Baruah, known for creating programs for visually impaired students.
Another heartwarming stop was at the Tai Phake School near Naharkatya, where one of the first E-HuTS labs was established in 2022.
The initiative has grown far beyond its original mission. It now:
What began with a few breadboards and LEDs is now shaping the future of budding engineers across India. More than 100 students have been affected, dozens of projects have been built, and schools now have functioning electronics labs. New IEEE student branches have sprung to life, and communities once isolated from STEM education are becoming part of the growing technological landscape.
The journey continues, driven by connection, compassion, and the belief that every student, no matter where they live, deserves access to quality STEM education.
2026-01-24 22:00:02
Dizzy Gillespie was a fan. Frank Sinatra bought one for himself and gave them to his Rat Pack friends. Hugh Hefner acquired one for the Playboy Mansion. Clairtone Sound Corp.’s Project G high-fidelity stereo system, which debuted in 1964 at the National Furniture Show in Chicago, was squarely aimed at trendsetters. The intent was to make the sleek, modern stereo an object of desire.
By the time the Project G was introduced, the Toronto-based Clairtone was already well respected for its beautiful, high-end stereos. “Everyone knew about Clairtone,” Peter Munk, president and cofounder of the company, boasted to a newspaper columnist. “The prime minister had one, and if the local truck driver didn’t have one, he wanted one.” Alas, with a price tag of CA $1,850—about the price of a small car—it’s unlikely that the local truck driver would have actually bought a Project G. But he could still dream.
The design of the Project G seemed to come from a dream.
“I want you to imagine that you are visitors from Mars and that you have never seen a Canadian living room, let alone a hi-fi set,” is how designer Hugh Spencer challenged Clairtone’s engineers when they first started working on the Project G. “What are the features that, regardless of design considerations, you would like to see incorporated in a new hi-fi set?”
The film “I’ll Take Sweden” featured a Project G, shown here with co-star Tuesday Weld.Nina Munk/The Peter Munk Estate
The result was a stereo system like no other. Instead of speakers, the Project G had sound globes. Instead of the heavy cabinetry typical of 1960s entertainment consoles, it had sleek, angled rosewood panels balanced on an aluminum stand. At over 2 meters long, it was too big for the average living room but perfect for Hollywood movies—Dean Martin had one in his swinging Malibu bachelor pad in the 1965 film Marriage on the Rocks. According to the 1964 press release announcing the Project G, it was nothing less than “a new sculptured representation of modern sound.”
The first-generation Project G had a high-end Elac Miracord 10H turntable, while later models used a Garrard Lab Series turntable. The transistorized chassis and control panel provided AM, FM, and FM-stereo reception. There was space for storing LPs or for an optional Ampex 1250 reel-to-reel tape recorder.
The “G” in Project G stood for “globe.” The hermetically sealed 46-centimeter-diameter sound globes were made of spun aluminum and mounted at the ends of the cantilevered base; inside were Wharfedale speakers. The sound globes rotated 340 degrees to project a cone of sound and could be tuned to re-create the environment in which the music was originally recorded—a concert hall, cathedral, nightclub, or opera house.
Diane Landry, winner of the 1963 Miss Canada beauty pageant, poses with a Project G2. Nina Munk/The Peter Munk Estate
Initially, Clairtone intended to produce only a handful of the stereos. As one writer later put it, it was more like a concept car “intended to give Clairtone an aura of futuristic cool.” Eventually fewer than 500 were made. But the Project G still became an icon of mod ’60s Canadian design, winning a silver medal at the 13th Milan Triennale, the international design exhibition.
And then it was over; the dream had ended. Eleven years after its founding, Clairtone collapsed, and Munk and cofounder David Gilmour lost control of the company.
Clairtone’s Peter Munk lived a colorful life, with a nightmarish start and many fantastic and dreamlike parts too. He was born in 1927 in Budapest to a prosperous Jewish family. In the spring of 1944, Munk and 13 members of his family boarded a train with more than 1,600 Jews bound for the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. They arrived, but after some weeks the train moved on, eventually reaching neutral Switzerland. It later emerged that the Nazis had extorted large sums of cash and valuables from the occupants in exchange for letting the train proceed.
As a teenager in Switzerland, Munk was a self-described party animal. He enjoyed dancing and dating and going on long ski trips with friends. Schoolwork was not a top priority, and he didn’t have the grades to attend a Swiss university. His mother, an Auschwitz survivor, encouraged him to study in Canada, where he had an uncle.
Before he could enroll, though, Munk blew his tuition money entertaining a young woman during a trip to New York. He then found work picking tobacco, earned enough for tuition, and graduated from the University of Toronto in 1952 with a degree in electrical engineering.
Clairtone cofounders Peter Munk [left] and David Gilmour envisioned the company as a luxury brand.Nina Munk/The Peter Munk Estate
At the age of 30, Munk was making custom hi-fi sets for wealthy clients when he and David Gilmour, who owned a small business importing Scandinavian goods, decided to join forces. Their idea was to create high-fidelity equipment with a contemporary Scandinavian design. Munk’s father-in-law, William Jay Gutterson, invested $3,000. Gilmour mortgaged his house. In 1958, Clairtone Sound Corp. was born.
From the beginning, Munk and Gilmour sought a high-end clientele. They positioned Clairtone as a luxury brand, part of an elegant lifestyle. If you were the type of woman who listened to music while wearing pearls and a strapless gown and lounging on a shag rug, your music would be playing on a Clairtone. If you were a man who dressed smartly and owned an Arne Jacobsen Egg chair, you would also be listening on a Clairtone. That was the modern lifestyle captured in the company’s advertisements.
In 1958, Clairtone produced its first prototype: the monophonic 100-M, which had a long, low cabinet made from oiled teak, with a Dual 1004 turntable, a Granco tube chassis, and a pair of Coral speakers. It never went into production, but the next model, the stereophonic 100-S, won a Design Award from Canada’s National Industrial Design Council in 1959. By 1963, Clairtone was selling 25,000 units a year.
Peter Munk visits the Project G assembly line in 1965. Nina Munk/The Peter Munk Estate
Design was always front and center at Clairtone, not just for the products but also for the typography, advertisements, and even the annual reports. Yet nothing in the early designs signaled the dramatic turn it would take with the Project G. That came about because of Hugh Spencer.
Spencer was not an engineer, nor did he have experience designing consumer electronics. His day job was designing sets for the Canadian Broadcast Corp. He consulted regularly with Clairtone on the company’s graphics and signage. The only stereo he ever designed for Clairtone was the Project G, which he first modeled as a wooden box with tennis balls stuck to the sides.
From both design and quality perspectives, Clairtone was successful. But the company was almost always hemorrhaging cash. In 1966, with great fanfare and large government incentives, the company opened a state-of-the-art production facility in Nova Scotia. It was a mismatch. The local workforce didn’t have the necessary skills, and the surrounding infrastructure couldn’t handle the production. On 27 August 1967, Munk and Gilmour were forced out of Clairtone, which became the property of the government of Nova Scotia.
Despite the demise of their first company (and the government inquiry that followed), Munk and Gilmour remained friends and went on to become serial entrepreneurs. Their next venture? A resort in Fiji, which became part of a large hotel chain in that country, Australia, and New Zealand. (Gilmour later founded Fiji Water.) Then Munk and Gilmour bought a gold mine and cofounded Barrick Gold (now Barrick Mining Corp., one of the largest gold mining operations in the world). Their businesses all had ups and downs, but both men became extremely wealthy and noted philanthropists.
As an example of iconic design, the Project G seems like an ideal specimen for museum collections. And in 1991, Frank Davies, one of the designers who worked for Clairtone, donated a Project G to the recently launched Design Exchange in Toronto. It would be the first object in the DX’s permanent collection, which sought to preserve examples of Canadian design. The museum quickly became Canada’s center for the promotion of design, hosting more than 50 programs each year to teach people about how design influences every aspect of our lives.
In 2008, the museum opened The Art of Clairtone: The Making of a Design Icon, 1958–1971, an exhibition showcasing the company’s distinctive graphic design, industrial design, engineering, and photography.
David Gilmour’s wife, Anna Gilmour, was the company’s first in-house model.Nina Munk/The Peter Munk Estate
But what happened to the DX itself is a reminder that any museum, however worthy, shouldn’t be taken for granted. In 2019, the DX abruptly closed its permanent collection, and curators were charged with deaccessioning its objects. Fortunately, the Royal Ontario Museum, Carleton and York Universities, and the Archives of Ontario, among others, were able to accept the artifacts and companion archives. (The Project G pictured at top is now at the Royal Ontario Museum.)
Researchers at York and Carleton have been working to digitize and virtually reconstitute the DX collection, through the xDX Project. They’re using the Linked Infrastructure for Networked Cultural Scholarship (LINCS) to turn interlinked and contextualized data about the collection into a searchable database. It’s a worthy goal, even if it’s not quite the same as having all of the artifacts and supporting papers physically together in one place. I admit to feeling both pleased about this virtual workaround, and also a little sad that a unified collection that once spoke to the historical significance of Canadian design no longer exists.
Part of a continuing series looking at historical artifacts that embrace the boundless potential of technology.
An abridged version of this article appears in the February 2026 print issue as “The Project G Stereo Defined 1960s Cool.”
I first learned about Clairtone’s Project G from a panel on Canada’s design heritage organized by York University historian Jan Hadlaw at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for the History of Technology.
The Art of Clairtone: The Making of a Design Icon, 1958–1971 by Nina Munk (Peter Munk’s daughter) and Rachel Gotlieb (McClelland & Stewart, 2008) was the companion book to the exhibition of the same name hosted by the Design Exchange in Toronto. It was an invaluable resource for this column.
Journalist Garth Hopkins’s Clairtone: The Rise and Fall of a Business Empire (McClelland & Stewart, 1978) includes many interviews with people associated with the company.
Clairtone is a new documentary by Ron Mann that came out while I was writing this piece. I haven’t been able to view it yet, but I hope to do so soon.
2026-01-24 01:00:03
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.
Enjoy today’s videos!
One of my favorite parts of robotics is watching research collide with non-roboticists in the real (or real-ish) world.
[ DARPA ]
Spot will put out fires for you. Eventually. If it feels like it.
[ Mechatronic and Robotic Systems Laboratory ]
All those robots rising out of their crates is not sinister at all.
[ LimX ]
The Lynx M20 quadruped robot recently completed an extreme cold-weather field test in Yakeshi, Hulunbuir, operating reliably in temperatures as low as –30°C.
[ DEEP Robotics ]
This is a teaser video for KIMLAB’s new teleoperation robot. For now, we invite you to enjoy the calm atmosphere, with students walking, gathering, and chatting across the UIUC Main Quad—along with its scenery and ambient sounds, without any technical details. More details will be shared soon. Enjoy the moment.
The most incredible part of this video is that they have publicly available power in the middle of their quad.
[ KIMLAB ]
For the eleventy-billionth time: Just because you can do a task with a humanoid robot doesn’t mean you should do a task with a humanoid robot.
[ UBTECH ]
I am less interested in this autonomous urban delivery robot and more interested in whatever that docking station is at the beginning that loads the box into it.
[ KAIST ]
Okay, so figuring out where Spot’s face is just got a lot more complicated.
[ Boston Dynamics ]
An undergraduate team at HKU’s Tam Wing Fan Innovation Wing developed CLIO, an embodied tour-guide robot, just in months. Built on LimX Dynamics TRON 1, it uses LLMs for tour planning, computer vision for visitor recognition, and a laser pointer/expressive display for engaging tours.
[ CLIO ]
The future of work is doing work so that robots can then do the same work, except less well.
[ AgileX ]
2026-01-23 03:00:03
Strong leadership is essential for IEEE to advance technology for humanity. The organization depends on the dedicated service of its volunteers to advance its mission.
Each year, the Nominations and Appointments (N&A) Committee is responsible for recommending candidates to the Board of Directors and the IEEE Assembly for volunteer leadership positions, including president-elect, corporate officers, committee chairs, and committee members. See below for the complete list.
By nominating qualified, experienced, committed volunteers, you help ensure continuity, good governance, and thoughtful decision-making at the highest levels of the organization. We encourage nominators to take a deliberate approach and align nominations with each candidate’s demonstrated experience and the specific qualifications of the role.
To nominate a person for a position, complete this form.
The N&A Committee is currently seeking nominees for the following positions:
• Secretary
• Treasurer
• Vice President, Educational Activities
• Vice President, Publication Services and Products
• Audit
• Awards Board
• Collaboration and Engagement
• Conduct Review
• Election Oversight
• Employee Benefits and Compensation
• Ethics and Member Conduct
• European Public Policy
• Fellow
• Fellow Nominations and Appointments
• Governance
• History
• Humanitarian Technologies Board
• Industry Engagement
• Innovations (formerly New Initiatives)
• Nominations and Appointments
• Public Visibility
• Tellers
15 March
15 June
30 March
30 June
Anyone may submit a nomination. Self-nominations are encouraged. Nominators need not be IEEE members, but nominees must meet specific qualifications. An IEEE organizational unit may submit recommendations endorsed by its governing body or the body’s designee.
A person may be nominated for more than one position, however nominators are encouraged to focus on positions that align closely with the candidate’s qualifications and experience. Nominators need not contact their nominees before submitting the form. The IEEE N&A committee will contact eligible nominees for the required documentation and for their interest and willingness to be considered for the position.
For information about the positions, including qualifications, estimates of the time required by each position during the term of office, and the nomination process check the IEEE Nominations and Appointments Committee website. To nominate a person for a position, complete this form.
Make sure to check eligibility requirements on the N&A committee website before submitting a nomination as those that do not meet the stated requirements will not be advanced.
Volunteers with relevant prior experience in lower-level IEEE committees and units are recommended by the committee more often than volunteers without such experience.
Individuals recommended for president-elect and corporate officer positions are more likely to be recommended if they possess a strong track record of leadership, governance experience, and relevant accomplishments within and outside IEEE. Recommended president-elect candidates must have served on the IEEE Board of Directors for at least one year.
Contact [email protected] with any questions.
2026-01-22 22:00:02
Much has been made of the excessive power demands of AI, but solutions are sparse. This has led engineers to consider completely new paradigms in computing: optical, thermodynamic, reversible—the list goes on. Many of these approaches require a change in the materials used for computation, which would demand an overhaul in the CMOS fabrication techniques used today.
Over the past decade, Hector De Los Santos has been working on yet another new approach. The technique would require the same exact materials used in CMOS, preserving the costly equipment, yet still allow computations to be performed in a radically different way. Instead of the motion of individual electrons—current—computations can be done with the collective, wavelike propagations in a sea of electrons, known as plasmons.
De Los Santos, an IEEE Fellow, first proposed the idea of computing with plasmons back in 2010. More recently, in 2024, De Los Santos and collaborators from University of South Carolina, Ohio State University, and the Georgia Institute of Technology created a device that demonstrated the main component of plasmon-based logic: the ability to control one plasmon with another. We caught up with De Los Santos to understand the details of this novel technological proposal.
IEEE Spectrum: How did you first come up with the idea for plasmon computing?
De Los Santos: I got the idea of plasmon computing around 2009, upon observing the direction in which the field of CMOS logic was going. In particular, they were following the downscaling paradigm in which, by reducing the size of transistors, you would cram more and more transistors in a certain area, and that would increase the performance. However, if you follow that paradigm to its conclusion, as the device sizes are reduced, quantum mechanical effects come into play, as well as leakage. When the devices are very small, a number of effects called short channel effects come into play, which manifest themselves as increased power dissipation.
So I began to think, “How can we solve this problem of improving the performance of logic devices while using the same fabrication techniques employed for CMOS—that is, while exploiting the current infrastructure?” I came across an old logic paradigm called fluidic logic, which uses fluids. For example, jets of air whose direction was impacted by other jets of air could implement logic functions. So I had the idea, why don’t we implement a paradigm analogous to that one, but instead of using air as a fluid, we use localized electron charge density waves—plasmons. Not electrons, but electron disturbances.
And now the timing is very appropriate because, as most people know, AI is very power intensive. People are coming against a brick wall on how to go about solving the power consumption issue, and the current technology is not going to solve that problem.
What is a plasmon, exactly?
De Los Santos: Plasmons are basically the disturbance of the electron density. If you have what is called an electron sea, you can imagine a pond of water. When you disturb the surface, you create waves. And these waves, the undulations on the surface of this water, propagate through the water. That is an almost perfect analogy to plasmons. In the case of plasmons, you have a sea of electrons. And instead of using a pebble or a piece of wood tapping on the surface of the water to create a wave that propagates, you tap this sea of electrons with an electromagnetic wave.
How do plasmons promise to overcome the scaling issues of traditional CMOS logic?
De Los Santos: Going back to the analogy of the throwing the pebble on the pond: It takes very, very low energy to create this kind of disturbance. The energy to excite a plasmon is on the order of attojoules or less. And the disturbance that you generate propagates very fast. A disturbance propagates faster than a particle. Plasmons propagate in unison with the electromagnetic wave that generates them, which is the speed of light in the medium. So just intrinsically, the way of operation is extremely fast and extremely low power compared to current technology.
In addition to that, current CMOS technology dissipates power even if it’s not used. Here, that’s not the case. If there is no wave propagating, then there is no power dissipation.
How do you do logic operations with plasmons?
De Los Santos: You pattern long, thin wires in a configuration in the shape of the letter Y. At the base of the Y you launch a plasmon. Call this the bias plasmon, this is the bit. If you don’t do anything, when this plasmon gets to the junction it will split in two, so at the output of the Y, you will detect two equal electric field strengths.
Now, imagine that at the Y junction you apply another wire at an angle to the incoming wire. Along that new wire, you send another plasmon, called a control plasmon. You can use the control plasmon to redirect the original bias plasmon into one leg of the Y.
Plasmons are charge disturbances, and two plasmons have the same nature: They either are both positive or both negative. So, they repel each other if you force them to converge into a junction. And by controlling the angle of the control plasmon impinging on the junction, you can control the angle of the plasmon coming out of the junction. And that way you can steer one plasmon with another one. The control plasmon simply joins the incoming plasmon, so you end up with double the voltage on one leg.
You can do this from both sides, add a wire and a control plasmon on either side of the junction so you can redirect the plasmon into either leg of the Y, giving you a zero or a one.
You’ve built this Y-junction device and demonstrated steering a plasmon to one side in 2024. Can you describe the device and its operation?
De Los Santos: The Y-junction device is about 5 square [micrometers]. The Y is made up of the following: a metal on top of an oxide, on top of a semiconducting wafer, on top of a ground plane. Now, between the oxide and the wafer, you have to generate a charge density—this is the sea of electrons. To do that, you apply a DC voltage between the metal of the Y and the ground plane, and that generates your static sea of electrons. Then you impinge upon that with an incoming electromagnetic wave, again between the metal and ground plane. When the electromagnetic wave reaches the static charge density, the sea of electrons that was there generates a localized electron charge density disturbance: a plasmon.
Now, if you launch a plasmon by itself, it will quickly dissipate. It will not propagate very far. In my setup, the reason why the plasmon survives is because it is being regenerated. As the electromagnetic field propagates, you keep regenerating the plasmons, creating new plasmons at its front end.
What is left to be done before you can implement full computer logic?
De Los Santos: I demonstrated the partial device, that is just the interaction of two plasmons. The next step would be to demonstrate and fabricate the full device, which would have the two controls. And after that gets done, the next step is concatenating them to create a full adder, because that is the fundamental computing logic component.
What do you think are going to be the main challenges going forward?
De Los Santos: I think the main challenge is that the technology doesn’t follow from today’s paradigm of logic devices based on current flows. This is based on wave flows. People are accustomed to other things, and it may be difficult to understand the device. The different concepts that are brought together in this device are not normally employed by the dominant technology, and it is really interdisciplinary in nature. You have to know about metal-oxide-semiconductor physics, then you have to know about electromagnetic waves, then you have to know about quantum field theory. The knowledge base to understand the device rarely exists in a single head. Maybe another next step is to try to make it more accessible. Getting people to sponsor the work and to understand it is a challenge, not really the implementation. There’s not really a fabrication limitation.
But in my opinion, the usual approaches are just doomed, for two reasons. First, they are not reversible, meaning information is lost in the computation, which results in energy loss. Second, as the devices shrink energy dissipation increases, posing an insurmountable barrier. In contrast, plasmon computation is inherently reversible, and there is no fundamental reason it should dissipate any energy during switching.