Signal Stanford develops room-temperature nanoscale photonic device (Nature Communications)

Summary

A Stanford team developed a nanoscale photonic device that operates at room temperature without cryogenic cooling, publishing the work in Nature Communications (2025, vol. 17, no. 1, DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-66502-4) on 30 May 2026. The senior author was Jennifer Dionne, Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, with postdoctoral scholar Feng Pan as first author and Fang Liu and Tony Heinz contributing as transition metal dichalcogenide (TMDC) specialists. The device is built from a patterned layer of molybdenum diselenide (MoSe2) on a nanopatterned silicon substrate, with nanostructure sizes comparable to visible-light wavelengths, and it enables entanglement between photons and electrons to create qubits for quantum information systems. Feng Pan explained: "The photons spin in a corkscrew fashion... we can use these spinning photons to impart spin on electrons that are the heart of quantum computing," and described miniaturizing the technology into everyday electronics as "a 10-plus-year plan." Removing the cooling requirement is what determines whether such devices can leave the laboratory, with potential applications in secure communications, advanced sensing, high-performance computing and artificial intelligence.