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

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

Xiaoxuan Wu,‡^a Zhengyi Cao,‡^b Tianxiang Zhao,^a Yun Wu,*^b Zhonghui Li,^b Spyros Doukas,^c Elefterios Lidorikis,^c Yu Xue,^d Liu Liu,^de Omid Ghaebi,^f Giancarlo Soavi,

^fg Junpeng Lu,

^a Zhenhua Ni

*^a and Junjia Wang

*^a

Author affiliations

* Corresponding authors

^a National Research Center for Optical Sensors/Communications Integrated Networks, School of Electronic Science and Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China
E-mail: junjia_wang@seu.edu.cn

^b CETC Key Laboratory of Carbon-based Electronics, Nanjing Electronic Devices Institute, Nanjing 210016, China

^c Department of Material Science and Engineering, University of Ioannina, GR 45110 Ioannina, Greece

^d State Key Laboratory for Modern Optical Instrumentation, College of Optical Science and Engineering, International Research Center for Advanced Photonics, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China

^e Jiaxing Key Laboratory of Photonic Sensing & Intelligent Imaging, Intelligent Optics & Photonics Research Center, Jiaxing Research Institute, Zhejiang University, Jiaxing 314000, China

^f Institute of Solid State Physics, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, 07743 Jena, Germany

^g Abbe Center of Photonics, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, 07745 Jena, Germany

Abstract

Graphene modulators are considered a potential solution for achieving high-efficiency light modulation, and graphene–silicon hybrid-integrated modulators are particularly favorable due to their CMOS compatibility and low cost. The exploitation of graphene modulator latent capabilities remains an ongoing endeavour to improve the modulation and energy efficiency. Here, high-efficiency graphene–silicon hybrid-integrated thermal and electro-optical modulators are realized using gold-assisted transfer. We fabricate and demonstrate a microscale thermo-optical modulator with a tuning efficiency of 0.037 nm mW⁻¹ and a high heating performance of 67.4 K μm³ mW⁻¹ on a small active area of 7.54 μm² and a graphene electro-absorption modulator featuring a high speed data rate reaching 56 Gb s⁻¹ and a low power consumption of 200 fJ per bit. These devices show superior performance compared to the state of the art devices in terms of high efficiency, low process complexity, and compact device footage, which can support the realization of high-performance graphene–silicon hybrid-integrated photonic circuits with CMOS compatibility.

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Article information

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1039/D4NH00160E
Article type: Communication
Submitted: 11 Apr 2024
Accepted: 11 Jun 2024
First published: 14 Jun 2024

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Nanoscale Horiz., 2024,9, 1372-1378

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