Chip-Scale Photonic Platform Steers Laser Beams Across 161 Degrees Without

A research team at MIT, working with the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology and other collaborators, has demonstrated a chip-based photonic platform designed to steer light in two dimensions. Reported in Opto-Electronic Advances and available online Aug. 23, 2026, the work achieves 2D beam steering across a measured field of view of 161 degrees while keeping nearly diffraction-limited beam quality across a broad angular range. The approach differs from mainstream optical phased arrays by using optical projection instead of densely packed antenna arrays. A silicon photonic integrated circuit routes light through an on-chip switch network to a selected output waveguide, where a freeform micro-optical reflector shapes the beam upward into free space.