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"Nonlinearity in optics is quite challenging because photons don't interact with each other very easily. That makes it very power consuming to trigger optical nonlinearities, so it becomes challenging to build a system that can do it in a scalable way," Bandyopadhyay explains.

Zhou's method to improve materials' nonlinearity is a step closer to enabling those technologies.

"When we combined these materials in just the right way, we were able to experimentally access a new regime of phononic nonlinearity," said Sandia engineer Lisa Hackett, the lead author on the paper.

"The effective nonlinearity you can generate with these materials is hundreds or even thousands of times larger than was possible before, which is crazy," Eichenfield said.

The new detection method combined the traditional vertical hydrodynamic nonlinear rectification effect of 2D plasmons with the addition of a vertical diode-current nonlinearity.