Any Color You Like: NIST Scientists Create ‘Any Wavelength’ Lasers in Tiny Circuits for Light

NIST scientists have developed a new method for creating integrated photonic circuits on silicon wafers by layering specialized materials including lithium niobate and tantalum pentoxide (tantala). The resulting chips can generate laser light at virtually any wavelength from a single input color, fitting roughly 50 fingernail-sized chips with 10,000 photonic circuits each onto a beer-coaster-sized wafer. This breakthrough could enable cheaper, more portable quantum computers and optical atomic clocks, as well as more efficient AI chip interconnects and improved VR displays. The work was published in Nature and is being commercialized by Octave Photonics, a NIST spinout startup.