Dispersed-Monolayer Graphene-Doped Polymer/Silica Hybrid Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) Thermal Optical Switch with Low-Power Consumption and Fast Response.

Yue Cao,Jiawen Lv,Yunji Yi,Haowen Zhao,Baizhu Lin,Yue Yang,Daming Zhang,Fei Wang,Baohua Li,Xianwang Yang

doi:10.3390/polym11111898

Abstract

This article demonstrates a dispersed-monolayer graphene-doped polymer/silica hybrid Mach–Zehnder interferometer (MZI) thermal optical switch with low-power consumption and fast response. The polymer/silica hybrid MZI structure reduces the power consumption of the device as a result of the large thermal optical coefficient of the polymer material. To further decrease the response time of the thermal optical switch device, a polymethyl methacrylate, doped with monolayer graphene as a cladding material, has been synthesized. Our study theoretically analyzed the thermal conductivity of composites using the Lewis–Nielsen model. The predicted thermal conductivity of the composites increased by 133.16% at a graphene volume fraction of 0.263 vol %, due to the large thermal conductivity of graphene. Measurements taken of the fabricated thermal optical switch exhibited a power consumption of 7.68 mW, a rise time of 40 μs, and a fall time of 80 μs at a wavelength of 1550 nm.

Highlights

High-speed optical switch chips are core components in optical switching systems, meeting the requirements of being high speed, large capacity, and low delay [1,2,3]
The thermal conductivity of the composite material has been analyzed and calculated using the Bruggeman [19] and Lewis–Nielsen models [20,21], which are generally used to predict the thermal conductivity of a composite material
In the Bruggeman model, the thermal conductivity of composites can be calculated under the condition of having a low filler-volume fraction, which can be calculated by: 1−V =

Summary

Introduction

High-speed optical switch chips are core components in optical switching systems, meeting the requirements of being high speed, large capacity, and low delay [1,2,3]. Optical switches include conventional mechanical optical switches [4], waveguide switches such as electro-optical switches [5], acoustic-optical switches [6], and thermal optical (TO) switches. TO switch devices have attracted attention recently, due to their uniquely compact structure, low production cost, ease of integration, and good stability [7,8,9]. According to the structure of the device, TO switches can be categorized into X-junction TO switches [10] and Mach–Zehnder interferometer (MZI) switches.

Methods

Results

Conclusion