Can meta-materials be used to create more powerful computers

The concept of a metamaterial is to use some sort of composite structure to simulate a material property that is not found in nature -- usually simultaneous negative electric permittivity and magnetic permeability or a particular wave dispersion property -- in order to achieve effects that seem impossible, such as phase velocity and group velocity being in different directions (giving possibilities like invisibility and perfect distortionless lenses) or extremely slow group velocity (one possible application being a buffer for an optical communication system). If optical computing reaches outside of its limited bounds, metamaterials offer very interesting possibilities in signal routing and timing that could require less space and lower power.

Actually, there are already what could be considered electronic metamaterials -- composite structures that are designed to achieve things not seen in nature for the motion of electrons. They are already in use to make faster transistors, such as the heterojunction bipolar transistors used in the RF receivers for WiFi, which transistors have been observed to operate at speeds up to 700 GHz. Compare that to the traditional silicon FETs which theoretically can't operate past 40 GHz at any size (closer to 70-100GHz for strained silicon structures, and perhaps 120GHz for quasi-quantum confined structures such as FinFETs [or as Intel calls them, TriGate transistors]) and that's potential for much faster clock speeds out of computers, though at the cost of much higher power consumption.