Two-Dimensional Material Nanophotonics

TL;DR

This paper reviews the optical properties and applications of various two-dimensional materials, focusing on their light interactions and enhancement methods, highlighting black phosphorus as a bridging material for nanophotonics innovations.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of 2D materials' optical properties and discusses new approaches to enhance their light interactions, including integration with photonic structures and polaritonic resonances.

Findings

Diverse optical properties of 2D materials are summarized.

Methods to enhance light-matter interaction are discussed.

Black phosphorus bridges properties of graphene and TMDCs.

Abstract

The emerging two-dimensional (2D) materials exhibit a wide range of electronic properties, ranging from insulating hexagonal boron nitride, semiconducting transition metal dichalcogenides such as molybdenum disulfide, to semi-metallic graphene. Here, we first review the optical properties and applications of a variety of 2D materials, followed by two different approaches to enhance their interactions with light: through their integration with external photonic structures and through their intrinsic polaritonic resonances. Finally, we cover a narrow bandgap layered material, black phosphorus, which serendipitously bridges the zero gap graphene and the relatively large-bandgap TMDCs. The plethora of 2D materials and their heterostructures, together with the approaches for enhancing light-matter interaction offers the promise of scientific discoveries and nanophotonics technologies across a wide range of electromagnetic spectrum.