Only a few van der Waals semiconductors emitting light at mid-infrared telecom wavelengths have been demonstrated so far. Examples are black phosphorus or molybdenum ditelluride, but they suffer from photostability issues.

In our recent article “Anisotropic infrared light emission from quasi-one-dimensional layered TiS3“, by Ali Khatibi and colleagues, we demonstrate that titanium trisulfide is a robust semiconductor. It emits light centered at 1360 nm with linear polarization anisotropy due to its quasi-1D crystal structure.