A new research group in Stanford’s School of Engineering is pioneering plasmonics, which combines the bandwidth of photonics and the smallness of electronics.

Surface plasmons are density waves of electrons—picture bunches of electrons passing a point regularly—along the surface of a metal. Plasmons have the same frequencies and electromagnetic fields as light, but their sub-wavelength size means they take up less space. Plasmonics, then, is the technology of transmitting these light-like waves along nanoscale wires.