Twist Engineering for Reconfigurable Optical and Optoelectronic Devices

Abstract

Reconfigurable optical and optoelectronic devices require compact tuning mechanisms capable of reshaping electronic, excitonic, polaritonic, and photonic responses without rebuilding the underlying nanostructure. Against this backdrop, twist has emerged as a powerful geometric degree of freedom that reconfigures interlayer coupling, momentum matching, symmetry, radiation channels, and chiral response by simply rotating adjacent two-dimensional layers or photonic lattices. In this Review, we survey twist-engineered optical and optoelectronic devices spanning van der Waals materials and photonic platforms. We first review the current landscape of twist-angle metrology, classifying existing characterization approaches into three complementary categories: direct structural imaging, methods based on moiré periodicity and morphological features, and techniques that infer the twist angle from spectroscopic or electronic responses. We then survey the principal technological routes for twist-angle control, including deterministic transfer and growth strategies, atomic force microscopy (AFM)-assisted manipulation, quantum twisting microscopy (QTM), microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), and emerging non-contact approaches, highlighting their respective capabilities, limitations, and prospects for programmable and scalable moiré photonic platforms. Finally, we discuss the future evolution of twist engineering from the fabrication of individual twisted structures toward dynamically reconfigurable, feedback-controlled, and manufacturable photonic systems. We further highlight MEMS-based rotation, piezoelectric actuation, and micro-LiDAR as representative enabling technologies and emerging applications within this broader landscape.