Taking control of light emission
Researchers have found a way to couple the properties of different two-dimensional materials to provide an exceptional degree of control over light waves. They say this has the potential to lead to new kinds of light detection, thermal-management systems, and high-resolution imaging devices. The new findings — using a layer of one-atom-thick graphene deposited on top of a similar 2-D layer of a material called hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) — are published in the journal Nano Letters. The work is co-authored by MIT associate professor of mechanical engineering Nicholas Fang and graduate student Anshuman Kumar, and their co-authors at IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Center, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and the University of Minnesota. Although the two materials are structurally similar — both composed of hexagonal arrays of atoms that form two-dimensional sheets — they each interact with light quite differently. But the researchers found that these interactions can be complementary, and can...