Design of Ultra-Compact and Highly-Sensitive Graphene Assisted Silicon Micro-Ring Resonator Modulator for Switching Applications

In this paper, an ultra-compact and highly sensitive silicon micro-ring resonator (SMRR) based modulator is proposed which exhibits modulation based on the placement of graphene sheet at the coupling region. The device is realizable on a standard 220 nm silicon-on-insulator (SOI) platform. The intensity modulation is achieved by changing the coupling coefficient due to the variation of the length in the graphene layer placed over the coupling region of the device as well as by varying the external bias. Theoretical analysis of the proposed modulator using first-order perturbation theory and time-dependent dynamic model is presented. The proposed modulator offers a 10.2 dB of extinction ratio with 6 nm/μm wavelength tuning sensitivity. The wavelength tuning sensitivity with external bias voltage has been achieved and noted as 1.5 nm/V. The device has a footprint of ~40 μm2.