Abstract
Energy-efficient devices will play a key role in the continued performance scaling of next-generation information and communication technology systems. Graphene has emerged as a key optoelectronic material with unique energy-like
properties. But to the best of our knowledge, these advantages have not yet been fully exploited in optical modulators design. In this work, we design and analyze a novel optical modulator which is composed of two graphene layers and a
ring resonator made with different amount of graphene. For performance analysis, the ring resonator’s amount of graphene is varied from 25 to 100% with four discrete steps. The critical coupling condition representing the OFFstate,
and the 3-dB transmission level representing the ON-state of the device are obtained. Numerical results show this new optical modulator consumes as little energy as 4.6 fJ/bit whilst achieving high-speed operation with bandwidth up to 42.6 GHz when employing surprisingly only 25% of graphene. The 42.6 GHz modulator has a footprint as small as 22.𝟏 μ𝒎𝟐 with an active area of 1.68 μ𝒎𝟐 only, the smallest active area to date. Alternatively, the optical modulator achieves up to ~88.5 GHz at the expense of consuming 17.5 fJ/bit when using 100% of graphene. The proposed graphene-based modulator proved to be a compact, energy-efficient, high-speed device, useful for a myriad of applications including mobile fronthaul, telecom, and datacom.
properties. But to the best of our knowledge, these advantages have not yet been fully exploited in optical modulators design. In this work, we design and analyze a novel optical modulator which is composed of two graphene layers and a
ring resonator made with different amount of graphene. For performance analysis, the ring resonator’s amount of graphene is varied from 25 to 100% with four discrete steps. The critical coupling condition representing the OFFstate,
and the 3-dB transmission level representing the ON-state of the device are obtained. Numerical results show this new optical modulator consumes as little energy as 4.6 fJ/bit whilst achieving high-speed operation with bandwidth up to 42.6 GHz when employing surprisingly only 25% of graphene. The 42.6 GHz modulator has a footprint as small as 22.𝟏 μ𝒎𝟐 with an active area of 1.68 μ𝒎𝟐 only, the smallest active area to date. Alternatively, the optical modulator achieves up to ~88.5 GHz at the expense of consuming 17.5 fJ/bit when using 100% of graphene. The proposed graphene-based modulator proved to be a compact, energy-efficient, high-speed device, useful for a myriad of applications including mobile fronthaul, telecom, and datacom.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 2077-2090 |
Number of pages | 14 |
Journal | OSA Continuum |
Volume | 1 |
Issue number | 9 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 15 Sept 2022 |
Keywords
- Electrooptic Modulator
- Graphene based Modulator
- Optical Modulator
- High-speed fibre optics