Twenty years ago today, researchers at the University of Washington (UW), the University of Southern California, and industrial collaborators reported a breakthrough in telecommunications technology in the premier peer-reviewed journal, Science. The team, led by Prof. Larry Dalton at UW, had developed a polymer (plastic) electro-optic (EO) modulator, a device used for encoding signals for fiber optics, that exceeded the performance of standard EO modulators made with a crystalline material called Lithium Niobate.
