An on-chip programmable valley optoelectronic nanocircuit

An on-chip programmable valley optoelectronic nanocircuit

Nature Photonics

10.1038/s41566-026-01916-0

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-026-01916-0

Chi Li, Kaijian Xing, Wenhao Zhai, Luca Sortino, Andreas Tittl, Igor Aharonovich, Michael S. Fuhrer, Kenji Watanabe, Takashi Taniguchi, Qingdong Ou, Zhaogang Dong, Stefan A. Maier, Haoran Ren

Electrical and Electronic Engineering

25 May 2026

Li, C., Xing, K., Zhai, W., Sortino, L., Tittl, A., Aharonovich, I., Fuhrer, M. S., Watanabe, K., Taniguchi, T., Ou, Q., Dong, Z., Maier, S. A., & Ren, H. (2026). An on-chip programmable valley optoelectronic nanocircuit. Nature Photonics. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-026-01916-0

In transition metal dichalcogenides, the valley degree of freedom directly couples valley-polarized excitons, excited by circularly polarized light to valley-dependent chiral photons, enabling ultrafast light-driven valleytronics. However, achieving fully integrated valley optoelectronics, incorporating on-chip in situ generation, selective routing and electrical readout of valley-dependent chiral photons, remains an unresolved challenge. Here we present a valley-driven hybrid optoelectronic nanocircuit that integrates chirality-selective meta-waveguide photodetectors with transition metal dichalcogenides. At room temperature, our purposely designed meta-waveguide device generates near-unity valley-dependent chiral photons in the second-harmonic generation from an encapsulated tungsten disulfide monolayer and selectively couples them to unidirectional waveguide modes, achieving an exceptional polarization selectivity of 0.97. These valley-dependent waveguide modes were subsequently detected by atomically thin few-layer tungsten diselenide photodetectors, exclusively responsive to the above-bandgap upconverted photons, thereby enabling all-on-chip processing of valley-multiplexed images. Our demonstration bridges a critical gap in lightwave valleytronics, paving the way for compact, programmable and scalable valley information processing and fostering the development of light-based valleytronic quantum technologies.

Publisher Copyright

This research / project is supported by the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) - Manufacturing, Trade, and Connectivity Individual Research Grants
Grant Reference no. : M22K2c0088

This research / project is supported by the National Research Foundation - Competitive Research Programme
Grant Reference no. : NRF-CRP30-2023-0003

This research / project is supported by the SUTD - SUTD Kickstarter Initiative (SKI) grant
Grant Reference no. : SKI 2021_06_05

This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Nature Photonics. The final authenticated version is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41566-026-01916-0.

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