title: Broadband graphene electro-optic modulators with sub-wavelength thickness.
abstract: Graphene's featureless optical absorption, ultrahigh carrier mobility, and variable optical absorption by an applied gate voltage enable a new breed of optical modulators with broad optical and electrical bandwidths. Here we report on an electro-optic modulator that integrates single-layer graphene in a sub-wavelength thick, reflective modulator structure. These modulators provide a large degree of design freedom, which allows tailoring of their optical properties to specific needs. Current devices feature an active aperture ~100 µm, and provide uniform modulation with flat frequency response from 1 Hz to >100 MHz. These novel, low insertion-loss graphene-based modulators offer solutions to a variety of high-speed amplitude modulation tasks that require optical amplitude modulation without phase distortions, a flat frequency response, or ultra-thin geometries, such as for controlling monolithic, high-repetition rate mode-locked lasers or active interferometers.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of Colorado at Boulder, 2000 Colorado Avenue, Boulder, Colorado 80309-0390, USA. ChienChung.Lee@Colorado.EDU
authors.forename: C-C
authors.initials: CC
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Suzuki
authors.forename: W
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Xie
authors.forename: T R
authors.initials: TR
authors.lastname: Schibli
mesh_terms: D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D006108:Graphite / Q000737:chemistry*; D007368:Interferometry / Q000295:instrumentation*; D055617:Micro-Electrical-Mechanical Systems / Q000295:instrumentation*; D020349:Surface Plasmon Resonance / Q000295:instrumentation*; D013685:Telecommunications / Q000295:instrumentation*
chemical_list: D006108:Graphite