Overview
- The Nature paper reports a prototype that generates and controls thousands of individually addressable beams projected directly into free space.
- Upward‑curving emitters are formed by two layered materials, silicon nitride and aluminum nitride, whose differing thermal strain bends nanoscale structures off the chip surface.
- The team routed light through on‑chip waveguides and modulators to scan diffraction‑limited beams, demonstrating full‑color micro‑image projection with extremely high pixel density.
- The work began under the Quantum Moonshot Program to enable large‑scale optical control of diamond‑based qubits and involved MIT, MITRE, Sandia National Laboratories, and the University of Arizona.
- The devices operate with high stability at kilohertz rates and, according to the researchers, can scan more than 50× faster than state‑of‑the‑art mechanical mirrors, with next steps focused on scaling, yield, uniformity, and longevity testing.