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Ultrafast All-Optical Graphene Modulator

Authors :
Yingxin Xu
Bigeng Chen
Xiyuan Li
Zhifang Hu
Yao Xiao
Chao Meng
Wei Fang
Jiming Bao
Limin Tong
Y. Ron Shen
Hongqing Wang
Wei Li
Wei-Tao Liu
Source :
Nano Letters. 14:955-959
Publication Year :
2014
Publisher :
American Chemical Society (ACS), 2014.

Abstract

Graphene is an optical material of unusual characteristics because of its linearly dispersive conduction and valence bands and the strong interband transitions. It allows broadband light-matter interactions with ultrafast responses and can be readily pasted to surfaces of functional structures for photonic and optoelectronic applications. Recently, graphene-based optical modulators have been demonstrated with electrical tuning of the Fermi level of graphene. Their operation bandwidth, however, was limited to about 1 GHz by the response of the driving electrical circuit. Clearly, this can be improved by an all-optical approach. Here, we show that a graphene-clad microfiber all-optical modulator can achieve a modulation depth of 38% and a response time of ∼ 2.2 ps, limited only by the intrinsic carrier relaxation time of graphene. This modulator is compatible with current high-speed fiber-optic communication networks and may open the door to meet future demand of ultrafast optical signal processing.

Details

ISSN :
15306992 and 15306984
Volume :
14
Database :
OpenAIRE
Journal :
Nano Letters
Accession number :
edsair.doi.dedup.....b477a580025da58c24551a73a37b8724