Optical Phased Array Technology On-Chip at Near Infrared and Blue Wavelength

While beam steering systems have been used for years for applications such as imaging, display, and optical trapping, they require bulky mechanical mirrors and are overly sensitive to vibrations. Compact optical phased arrays (OPAs), which change the angle of an optical beam by changing the beam’s phase profile, are a promising new technology for many emerging applications. These include ultra-small solid-state LiDAR on autonomous vehicles, much smaller and lighter AR/VR displays, large-scale trapped-ion quantum computers to address ion qubits, and optogenetics, an emerging research field that uses light and genetic engineering to study the brain.