Graphene-based plasmonic waveguides for photonic integrated circuits

We perform experimental investigations on the characteristics of graphene-based plasmonic waveguides for development of photonic integrated circuits. By embedding chemical vapor deposited graphene strip in a photoactive UV curable perfluorinated acrylate polymer with a low refractive index and material loss, the two-dimensional metal-like plasmonic waveguide demonstrated as a light signal guiding medium for high-speed optical data transmission. The fabricated graphene-based plasmonic waveguide supports the transverse-magnetic (TM) polarization modes with the averaged extinction ratio of 19 dB at a wavelength of 1.31 mu m. The 2.5 Gbps optical signals were successfully transmitted via 6 mm-long graphene plasmonic waveguides. The proposed graphene-based plasmonic waveguides can be exploited further for development of next-generation photonic integrated circuit and devices. (C) 2011 Optical Society of America