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Nanophotonics with multilayer van der Waals materials

Nature Photonics volume 19, pages 788–802 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

The field of nanophotonics requires high-quality materials for the fabrication of resonant structures that can confine light down to the nanoscale. Metallic nanostructures often used for this purpose exhibit high optical losses, so high-refractive-index dielectrics such as silicon (Si) and III–V semiconductors are widely used instead. Recently, layered materials, often referred to as ‘van der Waals materials’ for the forces holding atomic planes together in bulk crystals, have been introduced as alternative dielectric building blocks for nanophotonics. Compared to traditional semiconductors, these materials exhibit higher refractive indices and transparency in the visible and near-infrared favourable for compact waveguides; strong birefringence and large nonlinear optical coefficients attractive for nonlinear optics; and out-of-plane van der Waals adhesive forces enabling novel tuning techniques and heterointegration approaches for the realization of previously inaccessible photonic structures. Recently, these properties of quasi-bulk van der Waals materials (as opposed to their widely studied monolayers) have been applied in a variety of photonic structures and devices, which will be discussed here. We report on recent progress in utilizing layered materials in waveguiding, wavefront shaping, Purcell enhancement, quantum nanophotonics, lasing, nonlinear optics, and strong light–matter coupling, as well as offer a snapshot of future developments in hybrid and tunable nanophotonics, three-dimensional photonic structures, optical trapping, polariton devices and van der Waals integrated nanophotonic circuits.

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Fig. 1: Complex refractive indices, birefringence and χ(3) of representative vdW materials.
Fig. 2: Fabrication of nanophotonic structures in vdW materials and post-fabrication repositioning techniques.
Fig. 3: vdW materials for waveguiding, wavefront shaping and nonlinear optics applications.
Fig. 4: Weak light–matter coupling, lasing and strong light–matter coupling with vdW-material nanoresonators.
Fig. 5: Future applications of vdW-material nanophotonics.

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Acknowledgements

P.G.Z., Yadong Wang, S.A.R and A.I.T. were supported by the European Graphene Flagship Project under grant agreement no. 881603 and EPSRC grants EP/S030751/1, EP/V006975/1 and EP/V007696/1. Yadong Wang and A.I.T. acknowledge support from UKRI fellowship TWIST-NAN0SPEC EP/X02153X/1. P.B., X.H. and A.I.T. acknowledge support by an EPSRC Programme Grant EP/V026496/1. S.-H.G. acknowledges financial support from the National Research Foundation of Korea (2021M3F3A2A03017083) and Samsung Science and Technology Foundation (SSTF-BA1902-03). T.S. acknowledges funding from the Swedish Research Council (VR project, grants nos. 2017-04545 and 2022-03347), the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation (KAW; grant no. 2019.0140), the 2D-TECH VINNOVA competence centre (ref. 2019-00068) and the Olle Engkvist Foundation (grant no. 211-0063). Yue Wang acknowledges a Research Fellowship awarded by the Royal Academy of Engineering RF/201718/17131 and EPSRC grant no. EP/V047663/1. I.A. was supported by the Australian Research Council (ARC) through grants CE200100010 and FT220100053, by the Office of Naval Research Global (N62909-22-1-2028), and by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research under award number FA2386-25-1-4044. A.T. and L.S. were funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under grant no. TI 1063/1 and by the European Union (ERC, METANEXT, 101078018 and EIC, NEHO, 101046329). Views and opinions expressed are, however, those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union, the European Research Council Executive Agency, or the European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency (EISMEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

    Panaiot G. Zotev, Paul Bouteyre, Yadong Wang, Sam A. Randerson, Xuerong Hu & Alexander I. Tartakovskii

  2. Chair in Hybrid Nanosystems, Nanoinstitute Munich, Faculty of Physics, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitiit Munchen, Munich, Germany

    Luca Sortino & Andreas Tittl

  3. School of Physics, Engineering and Technology, University of York, York, UK

    Yue Wang

  4. Department of Physics, Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg, Sweden

    Timur Shegai

  5. Department of Physics, Korea University, Seoul, South Korea

    Su-Hyun Gong

  6. School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, University of Technology Sydney, Ultimo, New South Wales, Australia

    Igor Aharonovich

  7. ARC Centre of Excellence for Transformative Meta-Optical Systems, Faculty of Science, University of Technology Sydney, Ultimo, New South Wales, Australia

    Igor Aharonovich

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  1. Panaiot G. Zotev
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Zotev, P.G., Bouteyre, P., Wang, Y. et al. Nanophotonics with multilayer van der Waals materials. Nat. Photon. 19, 788–802 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-025-01717-x

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