Two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors are emerging as a versatile platform for nanophotonics, offering unprecedented tunability in optical properties through exciton resonance engineering, van der Waals heterostructuring, and external field control. These materials enable active optical modulation, single-photon emission, quantum photonics, and valleytronic functionalities, paving the way for next-generation optoelectronic and quantum photonic devices. However, key challenges remain in achieving large-area integration, maintaining excitonic coherence, and optimizing amplitude-phase modulation for efficient light manipulation. Advances in fabrication, strain engineering, and computational modeling will be crucial to overcoming these limitations. This Perspective highlights recent progress in 2D semiconductor-based nanophotonics, emphasizing opportunities for scalable integration into photonics.

A computationally-efficient strength optimization method tailoring novel composite laminates using lamination parameters is developed. The method adopts a global p-norm approach to aggregate local failure indices into a global failure index, based on the Tsai-Wu failure criterion. For design purposes, the novel composite laminates are characterized via lamination parameters that can subsequently be transformed into locally variable fiber orientations in an existing three-step optimization method. An elliptical formulation of the conservative failure envelope is applied to represent the Tsai-Wu criterion in terms of lamination parameters. A lamination-parameter-based two-level approximation for the global failure index is derived, which guarantees the anticipated conservativeness and convexity in a gradient-based optimization framework. Numerical results show that the computational efficiency of the proposed strength optimization method improves remarkably with a proper value of p, compared to the existing local-based min-max method. The method is also shown to be robust and generate converged optimum designs even in the presence of stress concentrations and singularities.