Manipulating polaritons at the extreme scale in van der Waals materials (Jul, 10.1038/s42254-022-00472-0, 2022)

Polaritons, originating from the interactions between photons and material excitations, have attracted attention because of their strong field compression and deeply subdiffractional scales. For practical applications, it is crucial to manipulate polaritons efficiently, but doing so has remained challenging because of the relatively poor tunability of traditional polaritonic media. Fortunately, in the past decade, polaritons hosted by van der Waals (vdW) materials have allowed new opportunities to tackle this difficulty. We review the state of the art in the manipulation of polaritons at the extreme scale in vdW materials. Benefiting from the large and expanding catalogue of vdW materials and associated architectures and techniques, more accessible manipulation strategies are expected, not only offering control of light at the nanoscale with new degrees of freedom, but also offering insight into nanophotonics, meta-optics, topological physics and quantum materials. © 2022, Springer Nature Limited.