Van der Waals nanophotonics

Numerous optical phenomena and applications have been enabled by nanophotonic structures. Their current fabrication from high refractive index dielectrics, such as silicon or gallium phosphide, pose restricting fabrication challenges while metals, relying on plasmons and thus exhibiting high ohmic losses, limit the achievable applications. An emerging class of layered, so-called van der Waals (vdW), crystals is presented as a viable nanophotonics platform in this work. In this project the student will use these novel vdW materials to design, fabricate and investigate a wide range of nanophotonic structures for linear and nonlinear optics applications.