Graphene-integrated ITO-based hybrid plasmonic electro-absorption modulator at 1.55 μm wavelength

This paper designs and examines a graphene-integrated ITO-based electro-absorption modulator (EAM) for a high extinction ratio (ER), using the finite-element method (FEM) to analyze graphene and ITO properties like conductivity, permittivity, and refractive index. Utilizing both the materials properties, high-performance matrices are achieved by optimizing the device's structural parameters in terms of the waveguide height (H-Si) and width (W-Si). Maximum difference in the insertion loss (IL) at Off-state and On-state have been observed at H-Si=W-Si=400 nm. Due to the integration of graphene and ITO into the Si waveguide higher confinement of light is observed in the Off-state, resulting in an ER>20 dB/mu m and figure-of-merit (FOM)>720. Also, the device attained a modulation speed (f)>280 GHz and energy consumption per bit (E-bit)>8 fJ/bit. The device could advance graphene-integrated EAMs for next-gen PIC technology.