Infrared hyperbolic metasurface based on nanostructured van der Waals materials

Patterning a hyperbolic metasurface Structured metasurfaces potentially enable the control of the propagation direction of excitations on the material's surface. However, the high losses associated with the materials used to date has led to relatively short lifetimes for the excitations. Li et al. patterned a subwavelength grating into a layer of hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) and found that the lifetime and propagation length of the excitations could be much longer. Direct imaging of the polariton excitations illustrates that hBN can be a viable platform for nanophotonic circuits. Science , this issue p. 892