Towards on-chip nascent all-van-der-Waals polarization optical components for nanoscale photonic applications
The integration of polarization-control elements into nanoscale photonic circuits remains a central challenge for modern on-chip optical technologies, which call for continuous miniaturization. Van der Waals (vdW) crystals provide a versatile platform for the creation of such components owing to their strong optical anisotropy, high-refractive indices and atomically precise heterostructure assembly capabilities. In this work, we demonstrate an approach towards the creation of all-vdW on-chip polarization optical components, exemplified with quarter-wave plates operating in the near-infrared (NIR) spectral region, realized in specifically twisted ReSe2/alpha-MoO3 vdW heterostructures on a Si/SiO2 platform. Here, low-symmetry ReSe2 layer serves as a source of exceptionally high linearly polarized excitonic emission, whereas in-plane birefringent alpha-MoO_3 provides polarization-state conversion. Furthermore, our finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulations quantitatively reproduce the experimental observations with high accuracy revealing the critical roles of layer thicknesses, twist-angle, Fabry-Perot interference and emitter distribution effects in the determination of polarization conversion efficiency, which yields up to 95 % degrees of circular polarization (DoCP) for the optimized parametrization. Our findings establish a practical route towards fully integrated all-vdW polarization optical components, providing a foundation for nanoscale photonic architectures based entirely on layered materials.