Efficient modulation of 1.55 μm radiation with gated graphene on a silicon microring resonator.

The gate-controllability of the Fermi-edge onset of interband absorption in graphene can be utilized to modulate near-infrared radiation in the telecommunication band. However, a high modulation efficiency has not been demonstrated to date, because of the small amount of light absorption in graphene. Here, we demonstrate a ∼ 40% amplitude modulation of 1.55 μm radiation with gated single-layer graphene that is coupled with a silicon microring resonator. Both the quality factor and resonance wavelength of the silicon microring resonator were strongly modulated through gate tuning of the Fermi level in graphene. These results promise an efficient electro-optic modulator, ideal for applications in large-scale on-chip optical interconnects that are compatible with complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor technology.

[1]  Jonghwan Kim,et al.  Electrical control of silicon photonic crystal cavity by graphene. , 2012, Nano letters.

[2]  Heinrich Kurz,et al.  Ultrahigh-quality-factor silicon-on-insulator microring resonator. , 2004, Optics letters.

[3]  Qianfan Xu,et al.  Silicon microring resonators with 1.5-μm radius , 2008 .

[4]  Lin Yang,et al.  Demonstration of reconfigurable electro-optical logic with silicon photonic integrated circuits. , 2012, Optics letters.

[5]  L. Falkovsky,et al.  Optical properties of graphene and IV–VI semiconductors , 2008 .

[6]  R. Rosenfeld Nature , 2009, Otolaryngology--head and neck surgery : official journal of American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery.

[7]  H. Bechtel,et al.  Drude Conductivity of Dirac Fermions in Graphene , 2010, 1007.4623.

[8]  N. Peres,et al.  Fine Structure Constant Defines Visual Transparency of Graphene , 2008, Science.

[9]  Qianfan Xu,et al.  Excitation of plasmonic waves in graphene by guided-mode resonances. , 2012, ACS nano.

[10]  Feng Wang,et al.  Gate-Variable Optical Transitions in Graphene , 2008, Science.

[11]  F. Xia,et al.  Ultracompact optical buffers on a silicon chip , 2007 .

[12]  Qianfan Xu,et al.  12.5 Gbit/s carrier-injection-based silicon micro-ring silicon modulators. , 2007, Optics express.

[13]  Weiwei Zhu,et al.  Electro-optic directed logic circuit based on microring resonators for XOR/XNOR operations. , 2012, Optics express.

[14]  Z. Zalevsky,et al.  Fabrication of an electro-optical Bragg modulator based on plasma dispersion effect in silicon , 2013 .

[15]  Yang Wu,et al.  Measurement of the optical conductivity of graphene. , 2008, Physical review letters.

[16]  Alexandra Boltasseva,et al.  Electrically tunable damping of plasmonic resonances with graphene. , 2012, Nano letters.

[17]  Carl W. Magnuson,et al.  Transfer of CVD-grown monolayer graphene onto arbitrary substrates. , 2011, ACS nano.

[18]  Yi Xuan,et al.  Eight-channel reconfigurable microring filters with tunable frequency, extinction ratio and bandwidth. , 2010, Optics express.

[19]  Sandro Rao,et al.  Electro-optical effect in hydrogenated amorphous silicon-based waveguide-integrated p-i-p and p-i-n configurations , 2013 .

[20]  R. Soref,et al.  Electrooptical effects in silicon , 1987 .

[21]  P. Kim,et al.  Dirac charge dynamics in graphene by infrared spectroscopy , 2008, 0807.3780.

[22]  A. Delage,et al.  Folded cavity SOI microring sensors for high sensitivity and real time measurement of biomolecular binding. , 2008, Optics express.

[23]  Guo-Qiang Lo,et al.  Silicon High-Order Coupled-Microring-Based Electro-Optical Switches for On-Chip Optical Interconnects , 2012, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters.

[24]  K. Klitzing,et al.  Observation of electron–hole puddles in graphene using a scanning single-electron transistor , 2007, 0705.2180.

[25]  Qianfan Xu,et al.  Micrometre-scale silicon electro-optic modulator , 2005, Nature.

[26]  Jonghwan Kim,et al.  Electrical control of optical plasmon resonance with graphene , 2013, CLEO: 2013.

[27]  T. Ando,et al.  Dynamical Conductivity and Zero-Mode Anomaly in Honeycomb Lattices , 2002 .

[28]  Ashok V. Krishnamoorthy,et al.  Computer Systems Based on Silicon Photonic Interconnects A proposed supercomputer-on-a-chip with optical interconnections between processing elements will require development of new lower-energy optical components and new circuit architectures that match electrical datapaths to complementary optical , 2009 .

[29]  Ciyuan Qiu,et al.  Ultraprecise measurement of resonance shift for sensing applications. , 2012, Optics letters.

[30]  Xuezhe Zheng,et al.  Low Vpp, ultralow-energy, compact, high-speed silicon electro-optic modulator. , 2009, Optics express.

[31]  Shanhui Fan,et al.  Coupling of modes analysis of resonant channel add-drop filters , 1999 .

[32]  Kun-Yii Tu,et al.  Demonstration of a Tunable Microwave-Photonic Notch Filter Using Low-Loss Silicon Ring Resonators , 2009, Journal of Lightwave Technology.

[33]  Michal Lipson,et al.  Breaking the delay-bandwidth limit in a photonic structure , 2007 .

[34]  P. Bøggild,et al.  Graphene conductance uniformity mapping. , 2012, Nano letters.

[35]  A Adibi,et al.  A Temperature-Insensitive Third-Order Coupled-Resonator Filter for On-Chip Terabit/s Optical Interconnects , 2010, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters.

[36]  Masayoshi Tonouchi,et al.  Terahertz and infrared spectroscopy of gated large-area graphene. , 2012, Nano letters.

[37]  Xiang Zhang,et al.  A graphene-based broadband optical modulator , 2011, Nature.

[38]  Keren Bergman,et al.  Optical interconnection networks for high-performance computing systems , 2012, Reports on progress in physics. Physical Society.