Efficient terahertz electro-absorption modulation employing graphene plasmonic structures

We propose and discuss terahertz (THz) electro-absorption modulators based on graphene plasmonic structures. The active device consists of a self-gated pair of graphene layers, which are patterned to structures supporting THz plasmonic resonances. These structures allow for efficient control of the effective THz optical conductivity, thus absorption, even at frequencies much higher than the Drude roll-off in graphene where most previously proposed graphene-based devices become inefficient. Our analysis shows that reflectance-based device configurations, engineered so that the electric field is enhanced in the active graphene pair, could achieve very high modulation-depth, even similar to 100%, over a wide frequency range up to tens of THz. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4773374]