Reversible Hydration Tuning of Polar Order and Large Nonlinear Optical Response in a 2D van der Waals Crystal, LiInP2S6
Jadupati Nag, Saugata Sarker, Michael J Waters, Safdar Imam, Himirkanti Sarkar, Anthony Richardella, James M Rondinelli, Mercouri G Kanatzidis, Venkatraman Gopalan · 2026
Read Reversible Hydration Tuning of Polar Order and Large Nonlinear Optical Response in a 2D van der Waals Crystal, LiInP2S6 by Jadupati Nag, Saugata Sarker, Michael J Waters, Safdar Imam, Himirkanti Sarkar, Anthony Richardella, James M Rondinelli, Mercouri G Kanatzidis, Venkatraman Gopalan (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13579208.txt.
Description
Nag and colleagues reported in 2026 on a layered crystal, LiInP2S6, whose optical power grows when it takes in water. Moisture normally ruins optical crystals, which soak up water and degrade. Here, water slipping between the layers changed the crystal's symmetry. It created a new polar phase, a state with a built-in direction of charge. Tiny shifts in the lattice hold that phase in place.
Nag measured a strong second-harmonic response, where light comes out at twice its entry frequency, in the wet phase at a wavelength used in telecom systems. The values were up to twice those of known materials with similar light gaps. Computer theory matched the new polar mode and the large response. Warming and drying reversed the change, confirmed by several tests. The team sees water-driven switching as a way to create and erase tunable optical parts on demand.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Jadupati Nag, Saugata Sarker, Michael J Waters, Safdar Imam, Himirkanti Sarkar, Anthony Richardella, James M Rondinelli, Mercouri G Kanatzidis, Venkatraman Gopalan |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 49 KB |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |