Broadband high-efficiency near-infrared graphene phase modulators enabled by metal-nanoribbon integrated hybrid plasmonic waveguides

Abstract

The phase modulator is a key component in optical communications for its phase modulation functions. In this paper, we numerically demonstrate a variety of ultra-compact high-efficiency graphene phase modulators (GPMs) based on metal-nanoribbon integrated hybrid plasmonic waveguides in the near-infrared region. Benefiting from the good in-plane mode polarization matching and strong hybrid surface plasmon polariton and graphene interaction, the 20 μm-length GPM can achieve excellent phase modulation performance with a good phase and amplitude decoupling effect, a low insertion loss around 0.3 dB/μm, a high modulation efficiency with V πL π of 118.67 V μm at 1.55 μm, which is 1-3 orders improvement compared to the state-of-the-art graphene modulators. Furthermore, it has a wide modulation bandwidth of 67.96 GHz, a low energy consumption of 157.49 fJ/bit, and a wide operating wavelength ranging from 1.3 to 1.8 μm. By reducing the overlap width of the graphene-Al2O3-graphene capacitor, the modulation bandwidth and energy consumption of the modulator can be further improved to 370.36 GHz and 30.22 fJ/bit, respectively. These compact and energy-efficient GPMs may hold a key to various high-speed telecommunications, interconnects, and other graphene-based integrated photonics applications.