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Design and Optimization of a Graphene Modulator Based on Hybrid Plasmonic Waveguide with Double Low-Index Slots

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Abstract

Graphene modulators based on surface plasmonic waveguides enable a strong interaction between light and graphene because great electric field enhancement occurs in the sub-wavelength region. However, a tight field confinement will cause a large metal absorption of light. Thus, graphene modulator base on hybrid plasmonic waveguide has a tradeoff between the propagation loss and the modulation depth. Here, we achieved a good balance between them by designing and optimizing an electro-optic modulator based on hybrid plasmonic waveguide with four graphene layers. The structure of the waveguide is metal/insulator/Si/insulator/metal. The modulation depth and the propagation loss of the modulator are 0.524 and 0.05 dB/μm respectively, which make a relatively high figure of merit about 10.5. Also the obtained modulation bandwidth and power consumption are 150 GHz and 0.607 pJ/bit, respectively.

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Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province Grant No. BK 20161429.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Advanced Photonics Center, Southeast University, Nanjing, 210096, China

    Jinyu Luan, Meiyong Fan, Pengfei Zheng, Huimin Yang, Guohua Hu, Binfeng Yun & Yiping Cui

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  1. Jinyu Luan
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  2. Meiyong Fan
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  3. Pengfei Zheng
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  4. Huimin Yang
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  5. Guohua Hu
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  6. Binfeng Yun
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  7. Yiping Cui
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Binfeng Yun or Yiping Cui.

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Luan, J., Fan, M., Zheng, P. et al. Design and Optimization of a Graphene Modulator Based on Hybrid Plasmonic Waveguide with Double Low-Index Slots. Plasmonics 14, 133–138 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11468-018-0785-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11468-018-0785-4

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