The nanodisk will make it possible to shrink photonic devices

Scientists have made significant progress in photonics by creating a nanodisk from molybdenum disulfide, which significantly improved the optical properties of the material.

Photonics, the science of the interaction of light and material, opens wide opportunities to create devices that work with optical signals rather than electrical ones. The application of photonics in medicine, communication and quantum technologies significantly surpasses traditional electronic solutions. Recent research has shown that molybdenum disulfide, which belongs to the transition metal dichalcogenides (TMD), exhibits exceptional nonlinear optical properties, particularly at room temperature.

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Scientists at Chalmers University of Technology were able to package this material into a nanodisk while maintaining a broken inverse symmetry in the volume of the material, which made it possible to strengthen nonlinear optical properties. The nanodisk showed a high ability to generate the second harmonic — nonlinear process that converts the frequency of light several thousand times more efficiently than in unstructured material. Such a design can capture an electromagnetic field and compress light, which makes it promising for the creation of miniature photonic devices.

The size of the nanodisk is about 50 nanometers, which is almost 100 thousand times thinner than similar elements used in modern laser systems. This makes it promising for the further miniaturization of nonlinear optics and the generation of entangled photon pairs, which is an important step towards the improvement of quantum technologies.