Photonic chip projects video from ski-jump scanner
A Nature paper shows a CMOS-compatible photonic “ski-jump” that can steer light from a tiny silicon chip directly into free space, projecting images and even video from a one-square-millimeter footprint. The device combines silicon nitride waveguides with piezoelectric aluminum nitride actuators to create fast 2D beam scanning, with the paper also demonstrating emitter addressing for quantum control. The core value here is not a novelty projector, but a compact chip-to-world interface that could scale into displays, sensing, LiDAR, and quantum systems.
This is a genuinely useful photonics platform disguised as a tiny projector demo: the big story is a CMOS-friendly way to scan diffraction-limited light off-chip with enough precision and density to matter for real systems.
- –Built in a 200-mm CMOS process using Si3N4 photonics and AlN piezo actuators.
- –Uses resonant 2D Lissajous scanning to project full-color images and video from a tiny footprint.
- –The paper also shows addressing of silicon-vacancy emitters, which makes the quantum-control angle real rather than speculative.
- –Near-term fit is compact beam steering for sensing, display, and optical control, not consumer projector replacement.
- –Practical constraints remain: resonant operation, vacuum packaging, and scan-pattern tradeoffs.
DISCOVERED
5h ago
2026-04-18
PUBLISHED
5h ago
2026-04-18
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Better Stack