Vacuum levitation and motion control on chip

Recent efforts in miniaturization of vacuum levitation set-ups have included electrostatic and optical traps. However, robustness remains a challenge for integration into confined settings, such as cryostats or portable devices. In this article we demonstrate levitation and motion control in high vacuum of a silica nanoparticle at the surface of a hybrid optical–electrostatic chip. By integrating fibre-based optical trapping and sensitive position detection with cold damping through planar electrodes, we achieve cooling the particle motion to a few hundred phonons. We believe that our fully integrated platform marks the beginning of on-chip devices combining integrated photonics and nanophotonics with precisely engineered electric potentials, significantly enhancing control over the particle motion towards complex state preparation and read-out