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  • Review Article
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Photonics with hexagonal boron nitride

Nature Reviews Materials volume 4, pages 552–567 (2019)Cite this article

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Abstract

For more than seven decades, hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) has been employed as an inert, thermally stable engineering ceramic; since 2010, it has also been used as the optimal substrate for graphene in nanoelectronic and optoelectronic devices. Recent research has revealed that hBN exhibits a unique combination of optical properties that enable novel (nano)photonic functionalities. Specifically, hBN is a natural hyperbolic material in the mid-IR range, in which photonic material options are sparse. Furthermore, hBN hosts defects that can be engineered to obtain room-temperature, single-photon emission; exhibits strong second-order nonlinearities with broad implications for practical devices; and is a wide-bandgap semiconductor well suited for deep UV emitters and detectors. Inspired by these promising attributes, research on the properties of hBN and the development of large-area bulk and thin-film growth techniques has dramatically expanded. This Review offers a snapshot of current research exploring the properties underlying the use of hBN for future photonics functionalities and potential applications, and covers some of the remaining obstacles.

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Fig. 1: Overview of hBN-based applications.
Fig. 2: Natural hyperbolic properties of hBN in the mid-IR.
Fig. 3: Applications of hyperbolic polaritons within hBN.
Fig. 4: Room-temperature, single-photon emission in hBN.
Fig. 5: Dependence of second-harmonic generation upon hBN stacking and thickness.
Fig. 6: Phonon-assisted recombination in hBN.
Fig. 7: Methods for growing hBN.
Fig. 8: Moiré heterostructures incorporating hBN.

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Acknowledgements

J.D.C. acknowledges the support of Vanderbilt University for its financial support of his effort in this work. Additionally, J.D.C. and D.N.B. offer their sincere thanks to Misha Fogler for his code, used to calculate the hyperbolic dispersion of hBN in Fig. 2. J.D.C. expresses his thanks to Joseph Matson for his efforts in improving the hyperbolic polariton image in Fig. 1 and for Fig. 2b. J.H.E. appreciates support for crystal growth from the National Science Foundation, award number CMMI 1538127. This work was financially supported by the network GaNeX (ANR-11-LABX-0014). GaNeX belongs to the publicly funded ‘Investissements d’Avenir’ programme managed by the French ANR agency. I.A. gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Australian Research Council (via DP180100077), the Asian Office of Aerospace Research and Development grant FA2386-17-1-4064 and the Office of Naval Research Global under grant number N62909-18-1-2025. The work at Columbia University on van der Waals materials and heterostructures is supported as part of Programmable Quantum Materials, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences (BES), under award DE-SC0019443. Research on photonic circuits is supported by AFOSR: FA9550-15-1-0478. Research on hybrid polaritonic structures is supported by ONR-N000014-18-1-2722. Development of nano-optics instrumentation at Columbia is supported by DOE-BES DE-SC0018218. D.N.B. is a Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation investigator under EPiQS Initiative Grant GBMF4533.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA

    Joshua D. Caldwell

  2. School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of Technology Sydney, Ultimo, NSW, Australia

    Igor Aharonovich

  3. Laboratoire Charles Coulomb, UMR 5221 CNRS-Université de Montpellier, Montpellier, France

    Guillaume Cassabois & Bernard Gil

  4. Tim Taylor Dept. of Chemical Engineering, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, USA

    James H. Edgar

  5. Department of Physics, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    D. N. Basov

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Caldwell, J.D., Aharonovich, I., Cassabois, G. et al. Photonics with hexagonal boron nitride. Nat Rev Mater 4, 552–567 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41578-019-0124-1

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