High-responsivity graphene photodetectors integrated on silicon microring resonators.

Schuler, S; Muench, J E; Ruocco, A; Balci, O; Thourhout, D van; Sorianello, V; Romagnoli, M; Watanabe, K et al. · Nat Commun · 2021

basic_science · Level V

Where this comes from

Abstract

Graphene integrated photonics provides several advantages over conventional Si photonics. Single layer graphene (SLG) enables fast, broadband, and energy-efficient electro-optic modulators, optical switches and photodetectors (GPDs), and is compatible with any optical waveguide. The last major barrier to SLG-based optical receivers lies in the current GPDs' low responsivity when compared to conventional PDs. Here we overcome this by integrating a photo-thermoelectric GPD with a Si microring resonator. Under critical coupling, we achieve >90% light absorption in a ~6 μm SLG channel along a Si waveguide. Cavity-enhanced light-matter interactions cause carriers in SLG to reach ~400 K for an input power ~0.6 mW, resulting in a voltage responsivity ~90 V/W, with a receiver sensitivity enabling our GPDs to operate at a 10<sup>-9</sup> bit-error rate, on par with mature semiconductor technology, but with a natural generation of a voltage, rather than a current, thus removing the need for transimpedance amplification, with a reduction of energy-per-bit, cost, and foot-print.