Grants and Contributions:

Grant or Award spanning more than one fiscal year. (2017-2018 to 2022-2023)

New materials can change our lives and the world around us. Cables of glass fiber and silicon circuits constitute the backbone of our information age. Now a new class of materials, each consisting of a single layer of atoms and known as two-dimensional (2D) materials, is emerging, with far-reaching potential. This revolution started in 2004 with the insulation of graphene, a 2D material made by a single layer of carbon atoms. Graphene is stronger than steel, harder than diamond, lighter than almost anything, transparent, flexible, and an ultrafast electrical conductor. Motivated by this success, the interest for 2D materials has skyrocketed as testified by massive investments into this area by several countries and organizations. The number of patents filed every day is impressive, mainly focusing on batteries, flexible electronics and optoelectronics. Nowadays approximately five hundred of these 2D materials have been estimated to be achievable and several are already available. This new class of materials is populated by a large variety of crystals, some acting as insulators and others as semiconductors or metals, all with a thickness of approximately one billionth of a meter. The lower dimensionality compared to their bulk relatives is responsible for a wealth of novel properties, and allows the stacking of different layers on top of one another to engineer new heterostructures with specifically tailored properties.
This research program will study the interaction between light and a special category of 2D materials possessing unique properties such as bright light emission and ultimate implementation for nanophotonic devices. The proposed research will study how 2D materials interact with light when they are coupled to functional nanostructures designed by a genetic-inspired approach to guide and confine light on a chip. It provides foundation for potentially transformative optoelectronic devices such as flexible sensors, lasers, and sources of non-classical light.
The interdisciplinary and collaborative nature of this program will attract students from a broad scientific community encompassing physics, materials science, and engineering. Students will gain invaluable hands-on experience in isolating new 2D materials, fabricating nanophotonic structures in the cleanroom, performing microscopy, and using advanced laser spectroscopy techniques. This research program is also expected to generate opportunities for collaborations with industries interested in optoelectronics, communications, and quantum technologies.