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Electrically controllable chirality in a nanophotonic interface with a two-dimensional semiconductor

Nature Photonics volume 16, pages 330–336 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Chiral nanophotonic interfaces enable propagation direction-dependent interactions between guided optical modes and circularly dichroic materials. Electrical tuning of interface chirality would aid active, switchable non-reciprocity in on-chip optoelectronic and photonic circuitry, but remains an outstanding challenge. Here, we report electrically controllable chirality in a nanophotonic interface with atomically thin monolayer tungsten diselenide (WSe2). Titanium dioxide waveguides are directly fabricated on the surface of low-disorder, boron nitride-encapsulated WSe2. Following integration, photoluminescence from excitonic states into the waveguide can be electrically switched between balanced and directionally biased emission. The operational principle leverages the doping-dependent valley polarization of excitonic states in WSe2. Furthermore, the nanophotonic waveguide can function as a near-field source for diffusive exciton fluxes, which display valley and spin polarizations that are inherited from the interface chirality. Our versatile fabrication approach enables the deterministic integration of photonics with van der Waals heterostructures and could provide optical control over their excitonic and charge-carrier behaviour.

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Fig. 1: Chiral nanophotonic–TMDC interface.
Fig. 2: Electrostatic tuning of interface.
Fig. 3: Gate dependence of valley polarization.
Fig. 4: Photonic pumping of valley(spin)-polarized exciton fluxes.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Code availability

The code used in this study is available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This work made use of the Pritzker Nanofabrication Facility part of the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago, which receives support from Soft and Hybrid Nanotechnology Experimental (SHyNE) Resource (NSF ECCS-2025633), a node of the National Science Foundation’s National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure. This work also made use of the shared facilities at the University of Chicago Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, supported by the National Science Foundation under award number DMR-2011854. Funding was provided by Army Research Office Grant #W911NF-20-1-0217 (R.S. and K.H.) and the Boeing company (A.B.). A.B. acknowledges support from the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship under grant no. DGE-1746045. We acknowledge Y. Zhou, J. Park and A. Dibos for helpful discussions.

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  1. These authors contributed equally: Robert Shreiner, Kai Hao.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

    Robert Shreiner, Kai Hao, Amy Butcher & Alexander A. High

  2. Department of Physics, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

    Robert Shreiner

  3. Center for Molecular Engineering and Materials Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Lemont, IL, USA

    Alexander A. High

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  1. Robert Shreiner
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Contributions

A.A.H. conceived the study. K.H., R.S. and A.B. developed the fabrication procedure. K.H. and R.S. performed experiments, analyses, and simulations. K.H., R.S. and A.A.H. wrote the manuscript with extensive input from all authors.

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Correspondence to Alexander A. High.

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Nature Photonics thanks Mikhail Kats and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Shreiner, R., Hao, K., Butcher, A. et al. Electrically controllable chirality in a nanophotonic interface with a two-dimensional semiconductor. Nat. Photon. 16, 330–336 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-022-00971-7

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