A team including researchers at Sandia’s Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies and Microsystems and Engineering Sciences Application (MESA) Complex developed a tunable optical metasurface that improves how much light is emitted from embedded Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) quantum dots (QDs) and at what wavelength this light is emitted. The QDs produce single photons, which are an essential component in one of the leading approaches for quantum communications, sensing, and information processing.
The researchers embedded low-density, voltage-tunable GaAs QDs in a “nonlocal” metasurface. By applying an electrical voltage, they tuned the QD emission wavelengths over a range of 4-5 nanometers (corresponding to 10-12 milli-electronvolts). The team can tune two QDs located micrometers apart so they emit the same wavelength and couple to the same metasurface mode. The metasurface also boosts the number of photons coupled out from the semiconductor sample by more than order of magnitude.
This result is a practical step toward the demonstration of cooperative emission from spatially separated single-photon emitters in a semiconductor metasurface device. Importantly, the nonlocal metasurface design reduces the need for placing each QD with extreme precision, which helps make scalable manufacturing more realistic. Improved photon extraction and reduced device-by-device placement demands could move single-photon hardware closer to deployable quantum communication and sensing systems.
Sandia researchers linked to work
- Iyer, P. P.
- Addamane, S.
- Brener, I.
- Mitrofanov, O.
Sponsored by
The U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering
Associated Publications
Prescott, S., Iyer, P. P., Park, S., Malek, S., Noh, J., Chen, P., Doiron, C. F., Addamane, S., Brener, I., Mitrofanov, O. (2026). “Voltage-Tunable Nonlocal Metasurface for Enhanced Outcoupling of Emission from Quantum Dots” Nano Letters, Vol. 26(10), pp. 3323–3329. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.nanolett.5c04834
August 24, 2026