he researchers can fabricate the wires with a uniform diameter and smooth surfaces down to the atomic level, the light waves remain coherent as they travel. The smaller fibers will allow devices to transmit more information while using less space. The new material may have applications in ever-shrinking medical products and tiny photonics equipment such as nanoscale laser systems, tools for communications, and sensors. Size is of critical importance to sensing-with more, smaller-diameter fibers packed into the same area, sensors could detect many toxins, for example, at once and with greater pre- cision and accuracy. Researchers at Harvard University led by Eric Mazur and Limin Tong (also of Zhejiang University in China), along with colleagues from Tohoku Univer- sity in Japan, report their findings in the December 18, 2003, issue of Nature. The NSF, a pioneer among federal agencies in fostering the development of nanoscale science, engineering, and technology, supports Mazur's work." Dr. Mazur's group at Harvard has made significant contributions to the fields of optics and short-pulse laser micromachining," says Julie Chen, program direc- tor of NSF's nanomanufacturing program. "This new method of manufactur- ing subwavelength-diameter silica wires, in concert with the research group's ongoing efforts in micromachining, may lead to a further reduction of the size of optical and photonic devices." 4.2.4 Hybrid Pastic Leveraging their growing laser expertise, University of Toronto researchers have developed a hybrid plastic that can produce light at wavelengths used for fiber-optic communication, paving the way for an optical computer chip. The material, developed by a joint team of engineers and chemists, is a plastic embedded with quantum dots-crystals just five billionths of a meter in size-that convert electrons into photons. The findings hold promise for directly linking high-speed computers with networks that transmit informa- tion using light. "While others have worked in quantum dots before, we have shown