Low-energy high-speed plasmonic enhanced modulator using graphene

Graphene, as a type of flexible and electrically adjustable two-dimensional material, has exceptional optical and electrical properties that make it possible to be used in modulators. However, the poor interaction between optical fields and a single atom graphene layer prevents the easy implementation of graphene modulators. Currently available devices often require a larger overlap area of graphene to obtain the desired phase or amplitude modulation, which results in a rather large footprint and high capacitance and consequently increases the energy consumption and reduces the modulation speed. In this paper, a localized plasmonic-enhanced waveguide modulator with high-speed tunability using graphene is proposed for telecommunication applications. Strong modulation of the transmission takes place due to the enhanced interaction between the ultrathin plasmon patches and the graphene, when the plasmons are tuned on-and off-resonance by the gate-tunable graphene. A 400 GHz modulation rate using low gated-voltages with an active device area of 0.2 mu m(2) and a low consumption of only 0.5 fJ/bit is achieved, which paves the way for ultrafast low-energy optical waveguide modulation and switching. (C) 2018 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement