Fabrication shifts van der Waals materials from passive coatings to active, controllable building blocks for reconfigurable photonic chips

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1124495

"van der Waals materials fragile, carving methods like focused ion beams destroy crystal lattice causing optical leaks, overcome using passivation-assisted nanofabrication: aluminum layer protects during carving. enables complex structure sculpting like microdisks/ photonic crystals with sub-100-nm precision without damage... >1 million quality factor, 10,000X more efficient nonlinear effects like changing light frequency, since light trapped so effectively... photonic circuits/ ultra-sensitive optical sensors"