Researchers at the University of Utah have developed a reconfigurable optical device that manipulates the circular polarization—or “handedness”—of light in real time, paving the way for faster, more flexible computing systems based on light instead of electricity.

Published in Nature Communications, the device is built using a heterostructure made of aligned carbon nanotubes and a phase-change material called germanium-antimony-tellurium. An electrical pulse triggers heat in the nanotubes, causing the material to switch between amorphous and crystalline phases—altering how it interacts with circularly polarized light.

“Traditional chiral optics were like carved stone—beautiful but frozen,” said Weilu Gao, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering. “This made them not useful for applications requiring real-time control”.

By tuning the structure’s circular dichroism, researchers can control how much left- or right-circularly polarized light is absorbed. This allows chirality to be used as an independent memory parameter in optical computing, without interfering with other properties like amplitude or wavelength.

The innovation’s scalable design makes it suitable for wafer-scale production, opening new doors in adaptive optics, reconfigurable sensors, and ultra-fast, light-based computing systems.