Abstract
Slow light has been widely utilized to obtain enhanced nonlinearities, enhanced spontaneous emissions and increased phase shifts owing to its ability to promote light–matter interactions. By incorporating a graphene on a slow-light silicon photonic crystal waveguide, here we experimentally demonstrate an energy-efficient graphene microheater with a tuning efficiency of 1.07 nmmW−1 and power consumption per free spectral range of 3.99 mW. The rise and decay times (10–90%) are only 750 and 525 ns, which, to the best of our knowledge, are the fastest reported response times for microheaters in silicon photonics. The corresponding figure of merit of the device is 2.543 nW s, one order of magnitude better than results reported in previous studies. The influence of the length and shape of the graphene heater to the tuning efficiency is further investigated, providing valuable guidelines for enhancing the tuning efficiency of the graphene microheater.
Highlights
Slow light has been widely utilized to obtain enhanced nonlinearities, enhanced spontaneous emissions and increased phase shifts owing to its ability to promote light–matter interactions
We systemically investigate the influence of the graphene– photonic crystal waveguides (PhCWs) interaction length and the shape of the graphene heaters on the tuning efficiency
We have comprehensively studied the influences of the graphene–PhCW interaction length and the shape of the graphene heater to the heat efficiency
Summary
Slow light has been widely utilized to obtain enhanced nonlinearities, enhanced spontaneous emissions and increased phase shifts owing to its ability to promote light–matter interactions. Owing to many unique properties, such as a zero-band gap and tunable Fermi level[27,28], high carrier mobility[29,30] and ultra-broad absorption bandwidth[31], graphene has been widely merged with nanophotonic structures to enhance the light–matter interaction[32,33,34,35] In addition to these broadly studied applications, the use of graphene as a heating material[36,37,38] in close contact to the silicon waveguide can significantly improve the tuning efficiency due to graphene’s low optical absorption rate[39]. The proposed slow-light-enhanced graphene microheaters show promising potential for applications in integrated silicon building blocks such as tunable phase shifters and filters that demand low power consumption, a fast response time, and CMOS-compatible fabrication processes
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