Soft and biological quantum light sources - SoftQuanta

ERC Consolidator Grant
Grant agreement ID: 101170123
Start date: 1 November 2025
End date: 31 October 2030
PI: Matjaž Humar

Quantum optics promises breakthroughs in communications, computing, sensing, and imaging. However, today’s quantum light sources rely on rigid, inorganic materials with limited tunability. With this in mind, the ERC-funded SoftQuanta project aims to change the game by creating quantum light sources from soft and biological materials. Specifically, it will use liquid crystals and biomaterials to create tunable, self-assembling sources of entangled photon pairs and single photons. Such devices will offer flexibility, biocompatibility, and even self-healing, enabling novel applications such as cell barcoding and enhanced quantum sensing. SoftQuanta has the potential to transform quantum photonics, opening up new opportunities for imaging, communications, and quantum technologies.

Intracellular lasers: Coupling of optical resonances with biological processes - Cell-Lasers

ERC Starting Grant
Grant agreement ID: 851143
Start date: 1 May 2020
End date: 31 October 2025
PI: Matjaž Humar

Currently, fluorescent probes are the tools of choice in live cell studies despite some obvious disadvantages like photo-bleaching, potential toxicity and broad emission spectrum limiting their sensitivity. Recently, micro-sized lasers were integrated into biological objects like individual cells enabling registration of laser emission instead of fluorescence. This EU-funded project aims to develop intracellular micro lasers as a tool to study cell dynamics, biophysics and biochemistry at the single cell level. Since spectral characteristics of laser emission are stable while traveling through the environment, intracellular lasers might enable localisation and analysis of cells embedded deep inside the tissue-of-interest.

Edible lasers for safety and authentication of food and pharmaceuticals - EdibleLasers

ERC Proof of Concept Grant
Grant agreement ID: 101188166
Start date: 1 January 2025
End date: 30 June 2026
PI: Matjaž Humar

The goal of EdibleLasers is to make microlasers entirely out of edible materials and explore their potential for barcoding and sensing in food, pharmaceuticals and beyond. In the ongoing ERC Starting Grant Cell-Lasers we have developed several lasers made out of biocompatible and biological materials and implanted them in cells and tissues. If the microlasers are made from biological materials they can also be edible. Building on this work, we have specifically developed several microlaser types that are completely made of edible materials and can be embedded in edible products. Their well-defined spectral fingerprints have the potential to enable much-improved food quality control, safety and traceability, including unclonable security tags and novel barcodes. Because of their small size, edible lasers can be embedded in any food without changing its characteristics such as taste and appearance. The microlasers could detect the freshness of food, as well as measure other food properties such as pH and sugar concentration. Further, the unique emission spectra of each microlaser can encode information directly inside food, such as expiration date and manufacturer data. Here I propose to optimize the edible microlaser sensors and barcodes to be viable as commercial products, to patent this technology and to explore the path toward commercialization. Taken together, developing advanced edible lasers will lead to a great diversity of applications of benefit to the wider society.