Dielectric environment engineering via 2D material heterostructure formation on hybrid photonic crystal nanocavity

Abstract

Hybrid integration of two-dimensional (2D) materials with nanophotonic platforms has enabled compact optoelectronic devices by leveraging the unique optical and electronic properties of atomically thin layers. While most efforts have focused on coupling 2D materials to pre-defined photonic structures, the broader potential of 2D heterostructures for actively engineering the photonic environment remains largely unexplored. In our previous work, we employed single types of 2D material and showed that even monolayer flakes can locally induce high-$Q$ nanocavities in photonic crystal (PhC) waveguides through effective refractive index modulation. Here, we extend this concept by demonstrating that further transferring of 2D material flakes onto the induced hybrid nanocavity to form heterostructures enable more flexibility for post-fabrication dielectric environment engineering of the cavity. We show that the high-$Q$ hybrid nanocavities remain robust under sequential flake stacking. Coupling optically active MoTe${}_2$ flake to these cavities yields enhanced photoluminescence and reduced emission lifetimes, consistent with Purcell-enhanced light-matter interactions. Additionally, encapsulation with a top hBN layer leads to a significant increase in the cavity $Q$ factor, in agreement with numerical simulations. Our results show that these heterostructure stacks not only preserve the cavity quality but also introduce an additional degrees of control -- via flake thickness, refractive indices, size and interface design -- offering a richer dielectric environment modulation landscape than what is achievable with monolayers alone, providing a versatile method toward scalable and reconfigurable hybrid nanophotonic systems.

19 pages (including references), 3 figures

References in corpus (22)

• Signatures of moiré-trapped valley excitons in MoSe${}_2$/WSe${}_2$ heterobilayers
• Excitonic linewidth approaching the homogeneous limit in MoS2 based van der Waals heterostructures : accessing spin-valley dynamics
• Regenerative oscillation and four-wave mixing in graphene optoelectronics
• Exciton Radiative Lifetime in Transition Metal Dichalcogenide Monolayers
• Ultrafast and energy-efficient all-optical switching with graphene-loaded deep-subwavelength plasmonic waveguides
• Room-temperature Continuous-wave Lasing from Monolayer Molybdenum Ditelluride with a Silicon Nanobeam Cavity
• Integration of Single Photon Emitters in 2D Layered Materials with a Silicon Nitride Photonic Chip
• Photonic Crystal Cavities from Hexagonal Boron Nitride
• Control of the Exciton Radiative Lifetime in van der Waals Heterostructures
• Direct exciton emission from atomically thin transition metal dichalcogenide heterostructures near the lifetime limit
• Enhanced light-matter interaction in an atomically thin semiconductor coupled with dielectric nano-antennas
• Ultralow mode-volume photonic crystal nanobeam cavities for high efficiency coupling to individual carbon nanotube emitters
• Strongly enhanced light-matter coupling of a monolayer WS2 from a bound state in the continuum
• Optospintronics in graphene via proximity coupling
• Cavity-Enhanced 2D Material Quantum Emitters Deterministically Integrated with Silicon Nitride Microresonators
• Second-harmonic generation in multilayer hexagonal boron nitride flakes
• Van der Waals heterostructure metasurfaces: atomic-layer assembly of ultrathin optical cavities
• Quantization of mode shifts in nanocavities integrated with atomically thin sheets
• Van der Waals functionalization of ultrahigh-Q silica microcavities for ${\chi }^{(2)}$-${\chi }^{(3)}$ hybrid nonlinear photonics
• Near-unity radiative quantum efficiency of excitons in carbon nanotubes
• Hybrid silicon all-optical switching devices integrated with two-dimensional material
• Self-aligned hybrid nanocavities using atomically thin materials