“Guided Polaritons along the Forbidden Direction in MoO3 with Geometrical Confinement” published in Nano Letters, selected as VINSE Spotlight Publication
Congratulations to Mingze He and Levi Hoogendoorn! Their article “Guided Polaritons along the Forbidden Direction in MoO3 with Geometrical Confinement” has been selected as a VINSE spotlight publication.
Mingze He is a 2023 Ph.D. graduate from the Department of Mechanical Engineering under the direction of Dr. Joshua D. Caldwell. He is currently a pastoral scholar at the City University of New York with Dr. Andrea Alù after graduation to further expand his research on light-matter interaction. In this recent publication co-led by a REU student, Levi Hoogendoorn, they report a guided mode in an in-plane hyperbolic material (α-MoO3) for polariton propagation engineering. In a pristine MoO3, light cannot travel along the [001] crystal direction due to the hyperbolic shaped isofrequency curve, thus referred to as “forbidden direction”. However, upon geometrical confinement in the [100] axis, a guided mode is formed and the wave is directed along the “forbidden direction”. This work reveals a possibility for manipulating HPhPs and paves the way for promising applications in nanophotonics based on natural van der Waals materials.