Science Daily February 24, 2020
Little is known about the effect of doping on the optical properties of TMDs at wavelengths far from excitonic resonances, where the material is transparent and therefore could be leveraged in photonic circuits. A team of researchers in the US (Columbia University, North Carolina State University, University of Chicago) has demonstrated the strong electro refractive response of monolayer tungsten disulfide (WS2) at near-infrared wavelengths (deep in the transparency regime) by integrating it on silicon nitride photonic structures to enhance the light–matter interaction with the monolayer. They showed that the doping-induced phase change relative to change in absorption for monolayer TMDs is significantly higher than that observed in materials commonly employed for silicon photonic modulators including Si and III-V on Si, while being simultaneously accompanied by negligible insertion loss. According to the researchers this is extremely encouraging for the scaling of photonic circuits and for low-power LIDAR...read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE