Carbon Sciences Inc. will fund R&D at the University of California, Santa Barbara, of a graphene-based optical modulator, a fiber optic component intended to address data center bottlenecks and enhance cloud computing.

The company believes that new materials such as graphene must be developed to increase data speeds for high-resolution video on demand, high-fidelity music streaming, high-volume e-commerce and other cloud-based services.

For optical data to be transmitted through a fiber optic cable, laser light must be modulated to encode specific digital data. The faster the light beam can be modulated, the more data can be encoded and transmitted. Graphene fosters extreme high speed and tunable conductivity. Changing the conductivity of graphene also changes its optical properties, changing the light passing through it to encode digital data.