All-optical applications for passive photonic devices of TaS2 nanosheets with strong Kerr nonlinearity.

2D Tantalum disulphide (TaS 2) has been widely studied as a typical transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) with excellent optical, chemical and electrochemical properties. However, there is little research on the comprehensively characterizing the interaction between light and the 2D TaS 2 material. In this work, we studied the nonlinear optical response of the high quality few-layer TaS 2 nanosheets and its all-optical applications. Our research shows that 2D TaS 2 nanosheet has a broadband characteristic and exhibits a strong Kerr nonlinear optical response based on the spatial self-phase modulation (SSPM). More importantly, by taking advantage of the highly nonlinear optical response of the2D TaS 2 , typical all-optical phenomena, such as all-optical switching and nonreciprocal light propagation, have been demonstrated experimentally. This work can be viewed as an important demonstration of a TMDCs-based application prototype in nonlinear photonics, which could potentially indicate an essential step toward miscellaneous TMDCs-based passive photonic devices (all-optical diodes, all-optical switches, etc.) • Spatial self-phase modulation of 2D TaS 2 was demonstrated firstly. • Broadband and strong Kerr nonlinear optical response of 2D TaS2 were confirmed. • All-optical switching has been realized with 2D TaS 2. • Nonreciprocal light propagation and all-optical diode were designed with 2D TaS 2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]