Led by Professor Chou Li-Jen, a Department of Materials Engineering research team proposed a novel idea for the next generation of photo-electric integrated circuit materials. The basic concept of optical computer, a new type of computer, comes from the replacement of electrons with photons for numeric calculations, logic operations, data storing and processing. Due to characteristics of light, optical computer's parallel processing and high speed calculation capability surpasses that of traditional computers. Therefore, photo-electric integrated circuit is expected to be widely applied in fiber optic communications and optical signal transmission. Its efficiency, speed and information volume of information transmitted will far exceed any chip technology today.

Chou's experiment proposes a novel idea for this field: One-dimensional metal–insulator heterostructure made of twinned Ga₂O₃ nanowires has localized surface plasmon resonance (SPR) effects that can help generate photoresponse using a double-frequency Nd:YAG laser with a wavelength of 532 nm. The resulting highly absorbent visible light can further generate photocurrent. As Ga₂O₃ is an exceptional insulator, the gold-in-Ga₂O₃ heterostructure nanowires can induce a remarkable current switch when exposed/unexposed to light and change into digital signals 0 and 1 in the digital logic device. The gold-in-Ga₂O₃ composites material is expected to become the basic construction unit of the next generation of optical computer.

The research results were not only published in the online Nano Letters on April 16, it was also reported in the cover story by the journal, marking the first Taiwanese research paper to gain such recognition. Also in the June issue of Nature Photonic the research results in its featured article, commenting that the research points a new direction for the next generation of photo-electric integrated circuit materials.

The paper's primary author is Chou's doctoral student Hsieh Chin-Hua, but certain parts in the paper originated from Chou's inspirations during his visit to the National Institute for Material Sciences, Tsukuba, Japan. The quantitative measurements of photo-electric device, on the other hand, came from the collaboration with Professor Lin Gong-Ru of the Graduate Institute of Electro-Optical Engineering, National Taiwan University. This method of international academic collaboration not only allowed different laboratories to share their resources but also hush bights Taiwanese researchers' inventiveness as well as academic excellence.