Imagine future smartphones and computers that run on light instead of electricity—making them faster, more efficient, and cooler to the touch.
Scientists have now taken a big step toward that reality by showing that light alone can generate and control a special type of “electron gas” inside certain materials.
The discovery could revolutionize how electronic devices work and help bridge the worlds of optics and electronics.
An international research team led by scientists from France’s CNRS at the Albert Fert Laboratory (CNRS/Thales) made this breakthrough, described in Nature Materials.
They found that when light shines on a material made of stacked oxide layers, it produces a thin, conductive sheet of electrons—known as an electron gas.
This same phenomenon happens naturally in some semiconductor materials used in LED screens, but until now, scientists could only manipulate it using electrical signals.
What makes this new finding remarkable is that light alone can trigger the effect—and when the light is turned off, the electron gas vanishes.
This precise control offers a new way to combine the speed of light with the reliability of traditional electronics.
“Electronic components that respond to light rather than electricity could be much faster and consume less energy,” the researchers explained.
If this technology is developed further, it could drastically simplify chip design. For instance, light-controlled transistors could replace up to one-third of the electrical connections on a computer processor, potentially saving billions of electrical contacts and reducing energy loss.
The discovery also opens doors for other futuristic applications. One exciting example is ultra-sensitive optical detectors—devices that could detect even the faintest glimmers of light.
In tests, the researchers found that when light hits the oxide material, the resulting electric current can be up to 100,000 times stronger than when the material is in darkness. Essentially, light acts as a power booster for the electrons.
To achieve this feat, the team combined high-precision experiments with advanced computer simulations. They carefully arranged atoms at the boundary between the two oxide layers, used atomic-scale imaging to observe how the atoms behaved, and modeled how electrons moved when light was applied.
Researchers from the Strasbourg Institute of Materials Physics and Chemistry and the Solid State Physics Laboratory at the University of Paris-Saclay also contributed to the project.
Together, they believe this light-triggered electron gas could form the foundation of next-generation ultra-fast, light-driven electronics, spintronics, and quantum technologies—heralding a future where data travels at the speed of light.
