{"id":233123,"date":"2026-03-12T03:31:17","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T08:31:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/twisted-bilayer-photonic-crystals-dynamically-tune-lights-handedness"},"modified":"2026-03-12T03:31:17","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T08:31:17","slug":"twisted-bilayer-photonic-crystals-dynamically-tune-lights-handedness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/twisted-bilayer-photonic-crystals-dynamically-tune-lights-handedness","title":{"rendered":"Twisted bilayer photonic crystals dynamically tune light\u2019s handedness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/twisted-bilayer-photonic-crystals-dynamically-tune-lights-handedness2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have created a chip-scale device that can dynamically control the \u201chandedness\u201d of light as it passes through\u2014also known as its optical chirality\u2014with a simple twist of two specially designed photonic crystals. The study is <a href=\"https:\/\/opg.optica.org\/abstract.cfm?URI=optica-13-3-449\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in the journal Optica.<\/p>\n<p>The work, led by graduate student Fan Du in the lab of Eric Mazur, the Balkanski Professor of Physics and Applied Physics, describes a <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2025-05-memory-chiral-photonic-device-enables.html?utm_source=embeddings&utm_medium=related&utm_campaign=internal\" rel=\"related\">reconfigurable twisted bilayer photonic crystal<\/a> that can be tuned in real time using an integrated micro-electromechanical system (MEMS). The breakthrough opens new possibilities for advanced chiral sensing, optical communication, and quantum photonics.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cChirality is very important in many fields of science\u2014from pharma to chemistry, biology, and of course, physics and photonics,\u201d Mazur said. \u201cBy integrating twisted photonic crystals with MEMS, we have a platform that is not only powerful from a physics standpoint, but also compatible with the way modern photonics are manufactured.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have created a chip-scale device that can dynamically control the \u201chandedness\u201d of light as it passes through\u2014also known as its optical chirality\u2014with a simple twist of two specially designed photonic crystals. The study is published in the journal Optica. The work, [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,19,1523,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-233123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biological","category-chemistry","category-computing","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233123\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}