Abstract
Polaritons are hybrid excitations of matter and photons. In recent years, polaritons in van der Waals nanomaterials—known as van der Waals polaritons—have shown great promise to guide the flow of light at the nanoscale over spectral regions ranging from the visible to the terahertz. A vibrant research field based on manipulating strong light–matter interactions in the form of polaritons, supported by these atomically thin van der Waals nanomaterials, is emerging for advanced nanophotonic and opto-electronic applications. Here we provide an overview of the state of the art of exploiting interface optics—such as refractive optics, meta-optics and moiré engineering—for the control of van der Waals polaritons. This enhanced control over van der Waals polaritons at the nanoscale has not only unveiled many new phenomena, but has also inspired valuable applications—including new avenues for nano-imaging, sensing, on-chip optical circuitry, and potentially many others in the years to come.
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Acknowledgements
This project was supported by the National Research Foundation, Prime Minister’s Office, Singapore under Competitive Research Program Award NRF-CRP22-2019-0006; the Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship program; the Simons Foundation; and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research MURI program. R.H. acknowledges financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (national project RTI2018-094830-B-100 and the project MDM-2016-0618 of the Marie de Maeztu Units of Excellence Program) and the Basque Government (grant no. IT1164-19). P.L. acknowledges the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 62075070). G.H. acknowledges the support from A*STAR AME Young Individual Research Grants (YIRG, No. A2084c0172).
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Q.Z., G.H. and W.M. wrote the manuscript; P.L., A.K. and R.H. contributed to the discussion of content; and A.A. and C.-W.Q. supervised the project. All authors contributed to the editing of the paper.
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Zhang, Q., Hu, G., Ma, W. et al. Interface nano-optics with van der Waals polaritons. Nature 597, 187–195 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03581-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03581-5
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