Energy Dissipation and Asymmetric Excitation in Hybrid Waveguides for Routing and Coloring

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates asymmetric excitation and energy dissipation in hybrid nano-waveguides using external nanofibers, enabling directional light routing and full-color emission for nanophotonic applications.

Contribution

It introduces a novel hybrid waveguide system with asymmetric excitation, enabling controlled light routing and full-color emission in integrated nanophotonics.

Findings

Asymmetric coupling causes different emission colors at waveguide terminals.

Rainbow-like light achieved through mixing red, green, and blue emissions.

System advances all-optical routing and full-color display capabilities.

Abstract

The delivery of optical signals from an external light source to a nanoscale waveguide is highly important for the development of nanophotonic circuits. However, the efficient coupling of external light energy into nanophotonic components is difficult and still remains a challenge. Herein, we use an external silica nanofiber to light up an organic-inorganic hybrid nano-waveguide, namely a system composed of a polymer filament doped with MoS$_{2}$ quantum dots. Nanofiber-excited nano-waveguides in a crossed geometry are found to asymmetrically couple excitation signals along two opposite directions, with different energy dissipation resulting in different colors of the light emitted by MoS$_{2}$ quantum dots and collected from the waveguide terminals. Interestingly, rainbow-like light in the hybrid waveguide is achieved by three-in-one mixing of red, green, and blue components. This hetero-dimensional system of dots-in-waveguide represents a significant advance towards all-optical routing and full-color display in integrated nanophotonic devices.