Broadband 10 Gb/s operation of graphene electro‐absorption modulator on silicon |
| |
Authors: | Yingtao Hu Marianna Pantouvaki Joris Van Campenhout Steven Brems Inge Asselberghs Cedric Huyghebaert Philippe Absil Dries Van Thourhout |
| |
Abstract: | High performance integrated optical modulators are highly desired for future optical interconnects. The ultra‐high bandwidth and broadband operation potentially offered by graphene based electro‐absorption modulators has attracted a lot of attention in the photonics community recently. In this work, we theoretically evaluate the true potential of such modulators and illustrate this with experimental results for a silicon integrated graphene optical electro‐absorption modulator capable of broadband 10 Gb/s modulation speed. The measured results agree very well with theoretical predictions. A low insertion loss of 3.8 dB at 1580 nm and a low drive voltage of 2.5 V combined with broadband and athermal operation were obtained for a 50 μm‐length hybrid graphene‐Si device. The peak modulation efficiency of the device is 1.5 dB/V. This robust device is challenging best‐in‐class Si (Ge) modulators for future chip‐level optical interconnects. |
| |
Keywords: | graphene silicon modulator integrated optical devices optical interconnects electro‐absorption |
|