My research into light control began with the realization that milk can actually be made transparent.

Yasuhiro Koike (Professor, Department of Applied Physics and Physico-Informatics)

Most white objects in the world only appear white due to the scattering of light. In other words, by controlling the size of "impurities," it is possible to make white things transparent and transparent things white. Applying the former principle to continuously control the refractive index while maintaining transparency led to the development of high-performance plastic optical fiber (POF), while applying the latter principle led to the development of liquid crystal displays. Until now, glass has been the primary material for optical fibers, but because their diameter is as thin as a human hair, connecting and branching them is not easy. POF is about 100 times thicker and less prone to breaking, allowing anyone to connect it as easily as plugging in an electrical cord. To be more precise, this is what is known as a graded-index POF. It is a functional material, or "smart material," in which a special polymerization method creates a refractive index distribution within the fiber to equalize the arrival times of light traveling straight through the fiber and light that travels while reflecting. This resulted in a fiber with an information transmission speed more than 200 times that of conventional POF. This was the world's first report to demonstrate that POF could be used for high-speed multimedia.