Graphene's spectacular performance in high-speed optical communications

Integrating graphene sheets into silicon photonics could form the basis for next-generation data communications. Researchers from the Graphene Flagship initiative have pushed the technology closer to application by demonstrating the world's first high-speed graphene-based data communication at a data rate of 50 Gb/s.

The Graphene Flagship programme aims to act as a catalyst for the development of groundbreaking applications by bringing together academia and industry to take this versatile material into society within 10 years. The importance of integrating graphene in silicon photonics was evident in the joint results produced by the collaboration between Flagship partners AMO GmbH (Germany), the National Inter-University Consortium for Telecommunications (CNIT) (Italy), Ericsson (Sweden), Ghent University (Belgium), the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO) (Spain),imec (Belgium), Nokia (Germany and Italy), the Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien) (Austria) and the University of Cambridge (UK).

Silicon has been widely hailed as suitable for monolithic integration for photonics. However, increasing the speed and reducing the power and footprint of key components of silicon photonics technology has not been achieved in a single chip, to date. But graphene—with its capacity for signal emission, modulationand detection—can be the next disruptive technology to achieve this.

"Graphene offers an all-in-one solution for optoelectronic technologies," notes Daniel Neumaier from AMO GmbH, Leader of the Graphene Flagships Division on Electronics and Photonics Integration. Itstuneable optical properties, high electrical mobility, spectrally broadband operation and compatibility with silicon photonics allow monolithic integration of phase and absorption modulators, switches and photodetectors. Integration on a single chip can increase device performance and substantially reduce its footprint and fabrication cost.