Anisotropic Enhancement of Second-Harmonic Generation in Monolayer and Bilayer MoS2 by Integrating with TiO2 Nanowires

The ability to design and enhance the nonlinear optical responses in two-dimensional (2D) transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) is both of fundamental interest and highly desirable for developing TMDC-based nonlinear optical applications, such as nonlinear convertors and optical modulators. Here, we report for the first time a strong anisotropic enhancement of optical second-harmonic generation (SHG) in monolayer molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) by integrating with one-dimensional (1D) titanium dioxide nanowires (NWs). The SHG signal from the MoS2/NW hybrid structures is over 2 orders of magnitude stronger than that in the bare monolayer MoS2. Polarized SHG measurements revealed a giant anisotropy in SHG response of the MoS2/NW hybrid. The pattern of the anisotropic SHG depends highly on the stacking angle between the nanowire direction and the MoS2 crystal orientation, which is attributed to the 1D NW-induced directional strain fields in the layered MoS2. A similar effect has also been observed in bilayer ...