An international team featuring research engineers from Australia has observed a groundbreaking wave movement in silicon, which could bring a new level of computer communication.

Researchers from the University of Sydney collaborated on a project to create on-chip soliton compression in a silicon photonic crystal, seen for the first time.

The discovery proves that silicon can be used to develop a new generation of photonic computer chips, which are faster, smaller and greener than before.

Similar to the way glass and fibre optics brought communication up to light speed in the 1980s, researchers today are hoping to improve our electronic communication ability with silicon.

In their simplest form, solitons are non-linear waves that propagate undistorted through a medium. Some of the most striking natural examples are rogue waves, enormous waves on the ocean capable of toppling huge sea vessels.

"Due to their ubiquitous appearance in diverse physical systems including, plasmas, proteins, magnetism, and optics, solitons are arguably the most fundamental nonlinear wave," said Dr Chad Husko from CUDOS (ARC Centre of Excellence for Ultrahigh bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems) at the University of Sydney's School of Physics.

The latest observations have been documented in the journal Nature Communications.

The results should eventually allow for the miniaturisation of optical components featuring soliton-based functionality in integrated silicon photonic chips.

"I am delighted with this latest breakthrough which is of both fundamental and technological importance and builds on almost 20 years of my own research in optical solitons and photonic crystals," said Professor Ben Eggleton, CUDOS Director and co-author.

"Our experiments will inform the ongoing push to develop optical circuits in CMOS-compatible materials such as silicon for on-chip communication, similar to the community's research in glass fibre in the 1980s," said Dr Husko.