The softness of liquid crystals, their anisotropic material properties, their strong response to external fields and their ability to align on patterned surfaces makes them unsurpassable for a number of photonic applications, such as flat-panel displays, light modulators, tunable filters, entangled photon light sources, lasers and many others. However, the microscale integration of liquid crystals into microphotonic devices that not only perform like silicon photonic chips but also use less energy, operate exclusively on light, are biocompatible and can self-assemble has not been explored. Here we demonstrate a soft-matter photonic chip that integrates tunable liquid-crystal microlasers and laser microprinted polymer waveguides. We demonstrate the control of the liquid crystal’s microlaser emission by nanosecond optical pulses and introduce the concept of resonant stimulated-emission depletion to switch the light by light. This opens a way to design an entirely new class of photonic integrated devices that can be made both biodegradable and biocompatible with a rich variety of applications in medicine, wearable photonics and logic circuits. We anticipate that soft-matter photonic circuits will not only outperform solid-state photonics in terms of a huge reduction in the number of production steps, the use of non-toxic chemicals and a better energy efficiency, but also could open an avenue to the paradigm of soft-matter photonics.

液晶的柔软性、各向异性材料特性、对外部场的强烈响应以及在图案表面上对齐的能力，使其在许多光子应用中无与伦比，例如平板显示器、光调制器、可调谐滤波器、纠缠光子光源、激光器等。然而，将液晶微尺度集成到微光子器件中，这些器件不仅性能像硅光子芯片，而且使用更少的能量，完全靠光工作，具有生物相容性并且可以自组装，尚未得到探索。在这里，我们展示了一种软物质光子芯片，它集成了可调谐液晶微激光器和激光微印刷聚合物波导。我们演示了通过纳秒光脉冲控制液晶的微激光发射，并引入了共振受激发射耗尽的概念，以逐光切换光。这为设计一类全新的光子集成器件开辟了一条道路，该器件既可生物降解，又具有生物相容性，可用于医学、可穿戴光子学和逻辑电路中的各种应用。我们预计，软物质光子电路不仅在大幅减少生产步骤数量、使用无毒化学品和提高能源效率方面优于固态光子学，而且还可能为软物质光子学的范式开辟一条道路。