Thermal stress-induced all-optical modulation in MXene-coated polarization maintaining fiber

Abstract

All-optical modulation has attracted increasing attention in photonics and optoelectronics for its great potential in all-optical communication, interconnects and signal processing. In this paper, an all-optical modulator based on MXene’s strong photo-thermal effect is proposed. The microfiber stereo structure enhances the light–matter interaction length, and the polarization maintaining fiber improves the environmental stability of the modulator. The all-optical modulation was successfully used to realize all-optical phase modulation and intensity modulation. For phase modulation, a free spectral range of 1.3 nm and an extinction ratio of ~20 dB were obtained with excellent stability. For intensity modulation, the rising/falling time was 0.6/0.3 s. This stable and multifunctional all-fiber modulator is intrinsically compatible with the fiber system and has potential application in all-optical information processing.