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Flatland wakes based on leaky hyperbolic polaritons

Nature Materials volume 24, pages 1569–1575 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Hyperbolic polaritons facilitate nanoscale light manipulation, but strong field confinement limits their transmission across interfaces. Conversely, leaky waves can convert radiation from confined sources towards the far field. Here we combine hyperbolic polaritons and leaky wave radiation to demonstrate flatland leaky polaritonic wakes. We employ a mixed-dimensional van der Waals heterostructure consisting of a nanoscale waveguide strip on a van der Waals film. The waveguide mode, confined inside the hyperbolic light cone of the background film, enables efficient directional in-plane emission of fast phonon polaritons. The constructive interference of these leaky polaritons generates highly directional polaritonic wakes. Their spatial symmetry can be tailored through the orientation of the heterostructure with respect to the hyperbolic film dispersion. Leveraging van der Waals stacking, we also demonstrate effective acceleration and deceleration of polaritonic wakes by locally tailoring the leaky nano-waveguide dispersion through gradient thickness design. Our findings demonstrate that polaritonic wakes hold promise for integrated nanophotonic circuits.

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Fig. 1: Device geometry.
Fig. 2: Nanoimaging of anisotropic and isotropic PWs.
Fig. 3: Steering PWs by crystal orientation of the heterostructure.
Fig. 4: Accelerating and decelerating PWs in non-uniform waveguides.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available within the paper and the Supplementary Information. Source data are provided with this paper.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge X. Xi and X. Wang (State Key Laboratory of New Ceramics & Fine Processing, Tsinghua University) for scanning near-field optical microscopy measurements and valuable discussions, and are grateful to X. Li (Institutional Center for Shared Technologies and Facilities of Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences) for assistance with structural fabrication and characterization. Q.D., H.H. and their team were supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (grant no. 2021YFA1201500 to Q.D.), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos. 52322209, 52172139 and 52350314 to H.H.; grant no. 51925203 to Q.D.), Beijing Nova Program (grant nos. 2022012 and 20240484600 to H.H.) and the Youth Innovation Promotion Association of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (grant no. 2022037 to H.H.). N.C. was supported by the Postdoctoral Fellowship Program and China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (grant nos. BX20250181 and 2024M760685). A.A. was supported by the Office of Naval Research (grant no. N00014-2212448), the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the Simons Foundation.

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Na Chen, Hanchao Teng.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. CAS Key Laboratory of Nanophotonic Materials and Devices, CAS Key Laboratory of Standardization and Measurement for Nanotechnology, National Center for Nanoscience and Technology, Beijing, P. R. China

    Na Chen, Hanchao Teng, Hai Hu, Min Liu, Chengyu Jiang, Zhuoxin Xue, Hualong Zhu & Jiayi Gui

  2. Center of Materials Science and Optoelectronics Engineering, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, P. R. China

    Na Chen, Hanchao Teng, Hai Hu, Min Liu, Chengyu Jiang, Zhuoxin Xue, Hualong Zhu & Jiayi Gui

  3. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, P. R. China

    Hanchao Teng & Qing Dai

  4. Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics and School of Optical and Electronic Information, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, P. R. China

    Peining Li

  5. Photonics Initiative, Advanced Science Research Center, City University of New York, New York, NY, USA

    Andrea Alù

  6. Physics Program, Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York, NY, USA

    Andrea Alù

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Contributions

Q.D. and H.H. conceived the idea. Q.D. and A.A. supervised the project. N.C. and H.H. led the experiments, prepared the samples and performed the near-field measurements. H.T. and A.A. developed the theory and performed the simulation. N.C., H.T. and H.H. analysed the data, and all authors discussed the results. M.L., C.J., Z.X., H.Z. and J.G. provided experimental and simulation assistance. H.H., N.C., H.T. and Q.D. cowrote the paper, with input and comments from all other authors.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Hai Hu, Andrea Alù or Qing Dai.

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Supplementary Figs. 1–19 and Notes 1–5.

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Statistical source data.

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Chen, N., Teng, H., Hu, H. et al. Flatland wakes based on leaky hyperbolic polaritons. Nat. Mater. 24, 1569–1575 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-025-02280-0

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