r work represents a step toward the integration of many fiber-optic communications devices on one chip," says Sargent. "We've shown that our hybrid plastic can convert electric current into light with promising efficiency and with a defined path toward further improvement. With this light source, combined with fast electronic transistors, light modula- tors, light guides, and detectors, the optical chip is in view." 4.2.5 Buckyballs University of Toronto researchers are also looking into how to gain better control over light. Right now, managing light signals (photons) with electronic hardware is difficult and expensive, which makes it difficult to harness fast and free-flowing photons. Yet help may soon be on the way, however. That's because University of Toronto researchers have developed a new material that could make photon control less expensive and far easier. Using molecules resembling 60-sided soccer balls, the researchers-based at the University of Toronto and Carleton University-believe that the material will eventually give optical network users a powerful new way to process information using light. NEW OPTICAL MATERIALS Along with Sargent and Carleton University chemistry professor Wayne Wang, the team developed a material that combines microscopic spherical particles-known as "buckyballs"-with polyurethane, a polymer often used as a coating on cars and furniture. Buckyballs, named after geodesic dome inventor Buckminster Fuller, are clusters of 60 carbon atoms, resembling soccer balls, that are only a few nanometers in diameter. Given the chemical notation C60, buckyballs were identified in 1985 by three scientists who later received a Nobel Prize for their discovery. Buckyballs have been the building block for many experimental materials and are widely used in nanotechnology research. When a mixture of polyurethane and buckyballs is used as a thin film on a flat surface, light particles traveling though the material pick up each others' patterns. The new material has the potential to make the delive