20.500.12556/DiRROS-28896 Microscale generation and control of nanosecond light by light in a liquid crystal The softness of liquid crystals, their anisotropic material properties, their strong response to external fields and their ability to align on patterned surfaces makes them unsurpassable for a number of photonic applications, such as flat-panel displays, light modulators, tunable filters, entangled photon light sources, lasers and many others. However, the microscale integration of liquid crystals into microphotonic devices that not only perform like silicon photonic chips but also use less energy, operate exclusively on light, are biocompatible and can self-assemble has not been explored. Here we demonstrate a soft-matter photonic chip that integrates tunable liquid-crystal microlasers and laser microprinted polymer waveguides. We demonstrate the control of the liquid crystal’s microlaser emission by nanosecond optical pulses and introduce the concept of resonant stimulated-emission depletion to switch the light by light. This opens a way to design an entirely new class of photonic integrated devices that can be made both biodegradable and biocompatible with a rich variety of applications in medicine, wearable photonics and logic circuits. We anticipate that soft-matter photonic circuits will not only outperform solid-state photonics in terms of a huge reduction in the number of production steps, the use of non-toxic chemicals and a better energy efficiency, but also could open an avenue to the paradigm of soft-matter photonics. tekoči kristali fotoni laserji true false true Nature Publishing Group Združeno kraljestvo Angleški jezik Slovenski jezik © The Author(s) 2025 Neznano 2026-04-13 10:20:17 2026-04-13 10:20:18 2026-04-14 03:50:21 0000-00-00 00:00:00 2025 0 0 str. 758–766 Vol. 19 Jun. 2025 0000-00-00 Zaloznikova Objavljeno NiDoloceno 2024-09-27 2025-04-28 2025-06-03 539 1749-4893 10.1038/s41566-025-01693-2 238908163 RAZ_Vellaichamy_Mahendran_2025.pdf RAZ_Vellaichamy_Mahendran_2025.pdf 1 DCB0CD49B2A4D7B410CD7A9EB8DBBB32 db126ae46efd8de9686ecf53efe800521df4096d1c3d9f2f59d0929f15ac1da7 1b47bf95-3712-11f1-9cc3-001a4af901a5 https://dirros.openscience.si/Dokument.php?lang=slv&id=43084 Institut Jožef Stefan 0 0 0