In high school I became fascinated with the operation of logic gates, and wanted to build a basic adder circuit, but in a new and innovative way. From my chemistry experience, I had learned about the metamaterial Vanadium Dioxide and it’s thermo-chromatic triggering properties. By following the manufacturing procedure outlined in Deki, Aoi, & Kajinami’s paper, I designed a set of optical logic gates using the Vanadium Dioxide thin films that would produce binary levels of infrared light. This infrared light needed to be powerful enough to heat these Vi-O₂ thin films, so I set about constructing a flowing-air Carbon Dioxide laser. I was able to obtain several initial lases with this resonator, but eventually retired this project due to the difficulty of keeping a low vacuum, dangers of working with high voltage, and shear impracticability of it.