• 文献标题:   Ultrafast All-Optical Graphene Modulator
  • 文献类型:   Article
  • 作  者:   LI W, CHEN BG, MENG C, FANG W, XIAO Y, LI XY, HU ZF, XU YX, TONG LM, WANG HQ, LIU WT, BAO JM, SHEN YR
  • 作者关键词:   graphene, microfiber, ultrafast, optical modulation
  • 出版物名称:   NANO LETTERS
  • ISSN:   1530-6984 EI 1530-6992
  • 通讯作者地址:   Zhejiang Univ
  • 被引频次:   301
  • DOI:   10.1021/nl404356t
  • 出版年:   2014

▎ 摘  要

Graphene is an optical material of unusual characteristics because of its linearly dispersive conduction and valence bands and the strong interband transitions. It allows broadband light-matter interactions with ultrafast responses and can be readily pasted to surfaces of functional structures for photonic and optoelectronic applications. Recently, graphene-based optical modulators have been demonstrated with electrical tuning of the Fermi level of graphene. Their operation bandwidth, however, was limited to about 1 GHz by the response of the driving electrical circuit. Clearly, this can be improved by an all-optical approach. Here, we show that a graphene-clad microfiber all-optical modulator can achieve a modulation depth of 38% and a response time of similar to 2.2 ps, limited only by the intrinsic carrier relaxation time of graphene. This modulator is compatible with current high-speed fiber-optic communication networks and may open the door to meet future demand of ultrafast optical signal processing.