New photonic chip traps light for millions of cycles using protective coating

Researchers have developed a breakthrough method to trap light on photonic chips for millions of cycles using a protective aluminum coating during fabrication of delicate van der Waals materials. The coating acts like microscopic armor, allowing precise nanoscale shaping without damaging these ultra-thin materials that were previously too fragile to use. The resulting microdisk structures achieved quality factors above 1,000,000 and demonstrated a 10,000-fold increase in light conversion efficiency, potentially enabling advanced quantum sensors and computing applications.