High efficiency graphene-silicon hybrid-integrated thermal and electro-optical modulators.

Area of Science:

• Photonics and optoelectronics
• Materials science and engineering
• Nanotechnology

Background:

• Graphene modulators offer high-efficiency light modulation potential.
• Graphene-silicon hybrid modulators are CMOS-compatible and cost-effective.
• Improving graphene modulator efficiency and performance is an active research area.

Purpose of the Study:

• To realize high-efficiency graphene-silicon hybrid-integrated thermal and electro-optical modulators.
• To enhance modulation and energy efficiency in graphene modulators.
• To demonstrate superior performance for integrated photonic circuits.

Main Methods:

• Fabrication of microscale thermo-optical modulators.
• Demonstration of graphene electro-absorption modulators.
• Utilizing gold-assisted transfer for device fabrication.

Main Results:

• A thermo-optical modulator with tuning efficiency of 0.037 nm mW^-1 and heating performance of 67.4 K μm³ mW^-1.
• An electro-absorption modulator achieving 56 Gb s^-1 data rate and 200 fJ/bit power consumption.
• Demonstrated superior performance in efficiency, process complexity, and device size.

Conclusions:

• High-efficiency graphene-silicon hybrid modulators can be realized using gold-assisted transfer.
• These devices exhibit excellent performance metrics, surpassing current state-of-the-art.
• The developed modulators support the creation of high-performance, CMOS-compatible graphene-silicon photonic circuits.