Muscovite identified as a low-index building block for ultrathin van der Waals photonic components

Researchers have discovered that the mineral muscovite, commonly used in various industrial applications, can serve as a low-loss optical material for advanced nanophotonic components. A team from the Institute of Physics at Yerevan State University and the Institute for Functional Intelligent Materials at National University of Singapore demonstrated that muscovite, a van der Waals mineral, possesses an unusually low refractive index and negligible optical losses across a wide spectral range from ultraviolet to near-infrared.

By characterizing muscovite's anisotropic dielectric response, the researchers found that it maintains a low refractive index and minimal absorption throughout the investigated spectral region. The material's weak in-plane birefringence can be neglected in thin-layer configurations. The researchers combined muscovite with high-index van der Waals material molybdenum disulfide (MoS₂) to create next-generation optical components, such as distributed Bragg reflectors and short-pass dichroic beam splitters, achieving remarkable thinness and high-performance functionality.

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