A subwavelength high modulation depth optical modulator based on bilayer graphene

In this paper, a waveguide-integrated graphene-based modulator at 1550 nm is presented, which consists of a hybrid waveguide and bilayer graphene. The strong light absorption of graphene is realized by inserting bilayer graphene into the mode coupling region of the hybrid waveguide and simultaneously taking advantage of SPPs effect as well as the electric field enhancement in the coupling region. The modulator shows excellent performance including 100% modulation depth, low power dissipation of 0.074 fJ/bit, small device size of 600 nm x 350 nm x 350 nm and wide 3 dB bandwidth of 319 GHz. In addition, results proved that the presented modulator is robust and its properties are quite tolerant to fabrication errors. These excellent properties make our proposal have great potential in application of optoelectronic integrated circuit.

Automated summary

This paper presents a waveguide-integrated graphene-based modulator with excellent performance, including 100% modulation depth, low power dissipation, small device size, and wide bandwidth. The modulator shows robustness and tolerance to fabrication errors, making it highly promising in the field of optoelectronic integrated circuits.