Design of asymmetric transmission of photonic crystal heterostructure based on two-dimensional hexagonal boron nitride material

Two-dimensional (2D) hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) possesses many unique properties such as high mechanical strength and excellent chemical and thermal stability. The 2D hBN exhibits a wide bandgap in the UV region and optically-stable ultra-bright quantum emitters that make hBN a promising nanophotonic platform for quantum computing and information processing, especially in the visible wavelength range. Therefore, it is greatly important to build up different nanophotonic devices with different functionalities based on this material platform to achieve the integrated photonic chips. Among the devices, the integratable optical asymmetric transmission devices are important elements for functional quantum computing chips. Since hBN is a dielectric material, photonic crystal (PhC) structure is the most suitable in principle and allows on-chip integration with other photonic devices. In this study, we theoretically design an asymmetric transmission device based on 2D hBN PhC heterostructures in the visible wavelength range for the first time. Due to the relatively low refractive index of 2D hBN material (<i>n</i> < 2.4), we design a free-standing hBN PhC heterostructure to maximize the light trapping in the structure and minimize the propagation loss. The asymmetric transmission device is composed of two square-lattice 2D PhC structures, namely PhC 1 and PhC 2. We use the plane wave expansion method (PWM) to calculate the iso-frequency contours (EFCs) of the PhC structures to study the light propagation inside of the PhCs, which will propagate along the gradient of direction of the EFCs. We design the PhC structure in the way that the incident light beams from different angles can be self-collimated along the <i>Г-X</i> direction of the PhC 2 and coupled out. On the other hand, the backward incident light is blocked by the bandgaps of PhC 2. In this way, asymmetric optical transmission is achieved with high forward transmittance and contrast ratio. In addition, we further finely tune the structural parameters, including the lattice constant and column radius of the PhCs to optimize the performance by using the finite difference time domain (FDTD) method. The resulting 2D hBN PhC heterostructure achieves an asymmetric transmission in a wavelength range of 610–684 nm with a peak forward transmittance of 0.65 at a wavelength of 652 nm. Meanwhile, the backward transmittance is controlled to be 0.04. As a result, the contrast ratio can reach up to 0.95. The working bandwidth of the hBN PhC is 74 nm (<i>T</i>_F > 0.5). In addition, the designed asymmetric transmission device has a small size of 11 μm × 11 μm, thus it is suitable for on-chip integration. Our results open up possibilities for designing new nanophotonic devices based on 2D hBN material for quantum computing and information processing. The design principle can be generally used to design other photonic devices based on 2D hBN material.