Abstract
In the advancement of photonics technologies, all-optical systems are highly demanded in ultrafast photonics, signal processing, optical sensing and optical communication systems. All-optical devices are the core elements to realize the next generation of photonics integration system and optical interconnection. Thus, the exploration of new optoelectronics materials that exhibit different optical properties is a highlighted research direction. The emerging two-dimensional (2D) materials such as graphene, black phosphorus (BP), transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) and MXene have proved great potential in the evolution of photonics technologies. The optical properties of 2D materials comprising the energy bandgap, third-order nonlinearity, nonlinear absorption and thermo-optics coefficient can be tailored for different optical applications. Over the past decade, the explorations of 2D materials in photonics applications have extended to all-optical modulators, all-optical switches, an all-optical wavelength converter, covering the visible, near-infrared and Terahertz wavelength range. Herein, we review different types of 2D materials, their fabrication processes and optical properties. In addition, we also summarize the recent advances of all-optical modulation based on 2D materials. Finally, we conclude on the perspectives on and challenges of the future development of the 2D material-based all-optical devices.
Highlights
Introduction iationsMoore’s law predicted that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit (IC)double every 18 months [1]
We mainly focused on reviewing the advancement of both the fundamental concept and application of all-optical technology using 2D materials, in optical modulation
This resulted in the saturation absorption effect, which is accountable for inducing the temporal modulation, by changing a continuous wave (CW) into a pulsing operation, namely Q-switched and mode-locked pulsing [9,11,12,14,16,104–111]
Summary
Since the discovery of carbon nanotube [35] and graphene [36], low-dimensional materials have attracted enormous research interests due to their great potential in nextgeneration nano-optoelectronic devices. A different type of 2D materials, such as transition metal dichalcogenides (TMD), black phosphorus (BP), and MXene have been explored and widely investigated. 2D materials offer great flexibility to be integrated into different photonics structure, including optical fiber and silicon substrate. This allows 2D materials to act as one of the most suitable candidates to combine with other functional materials and to be applied in a wide range of electronics and photonics devices. We will describe in detail the electrical and optical characteristics of graphene, TI, MXene, BP and TMD in the remainder of Section 2
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