Large optical nonlinearity enabled by coupled metallic quantum wells

New materials that exhibit strong second-order optical nonlinearities at a desired operational frequency are of paramount importance for nonlinear optics. Giant second-order susceptibility χ ⁽²⁾ has been obtained in semiconductor quantum wells (QWs). Unfortunately, the limited confining potential in semiconductor QWs causes formidable challenges in scaling such a scheme to the visible/near-infrared (NIR) frequencies for more vital nonlinear-optic applications. Here, we introduce a metal/dielectric heterostructured platform, i.e., TiN/Al₂O₃ epitaxial multilayers, to overcome that limitation. This platform has an extremely high χ ⁽²⁾ of approximately 1500 pm/V at NIR frequencies. By combining the aforementioned heterostructure with the large electric field enhancement afforded by a nanostructured metasurface, the power efficiency of second harmonic generation (SHG) achieved 10^-4 at an incident pulse intensity of 10 GW/cm², which is an improvement of several orders of magnitude compared to that of previous demonstrations from nonlinear surfaces at similar frequencies. The proposed quantum-engineered heterostructures enable efficient wave mixing at visible/NIR frequencies into ultracompact nonlinear optical devices.