All van der Waals Nanophotonics

Van der Waals materials have emerged as a promising materials platform for electronics and photonics. In this talk I will overview our recent theoretical and experimental efforts on creating ultra-confined nanophotonics devices. Owing to unique and strong resonances van der Waals materials exhibit very high refractive indices and a strong anisotropy. High reflective index, in turn enables, a conceptually new set of photonic devices that outperform current semiconductor and metallic devices. I will discuss the use of high refractive index transition metal chalcogenides, such as MoS2, and hexagonal boron nitride for visible and mid-IR nanophotonics. I will show that these van der Waals materials allow extreme optical field confinement in deeply subwavelength structures. Our studies suggest that smaller and more efficient devices may be created with the use of van der Waals materials.