atu- rally occurring material for transferring data from electronic to optical trans- mission and for many years the industry standard. The newest materials require less than one-fifth the voltage (under 1 volt) needed for lithium niobate. "What this shows is that people have done far better than nature could ever do in this process," says Larry Dalton, a University of Washington chem- istry professor and director of the Science & Technology Center on Materials and Devices for Information Technology Research. "The reason we're seeing improved performance is the rational design of new materials with new properties." The newest materials represent a nearly fivefold improvement in capability in just four years. At that rate, material capabilities will soon reach benchmarks set for 2006 by the National Science Foundation. Recent advancements are making possible technologies that were previ- ously only a fanciful vision, says Dalton. For example, components can now be made SO small and power efficient that they can be arranged in flexible, foldable formats yet experience no optical loss or change in power require- ments until the material is wrapped around a cylinder as tiny as 1.5 mm, a little bigger than a paper clip. NEW OPTICAL MATERIALS Such materials can be used to create space-based phased array radar systems for surveillance and telecommunications applications. Each face of a phased array typically has thousands of elements that work in a complex inter- dependence. A major advantage of the new material is that the entire radar system can be launched in a very compact form and then unfurled to its full form once it reaches orbit. Deployment costs can be greatly reduced because of low power requirements and the much-reduced weight of the material being sent into space. According to Dalton, techniques to mass produce the tiny fold- able components, which should reduce costs even further, are currently being developed. The newest materials have immediate applications in a number of other technologies as well, Dalt