Graphene Electro-Absorption Modulators for Energy-Efficient and High-Speed Optical Transceivers
Abstract
The increasing demand for energy-efficient hardware for artificial intelligence (AI) and data centres requires integrated photonic solutions delivering optical transceivers with Tbit/s data rates and energy consumption1pJ/bit. Here, we report double single-layer graphene electro-absorption modulators on Si optimized for energy-efficient and ultra-fast operation, demonstrating 67GHz bandwidth and 80Gbit/s data rate, in both O and C bands, using a fabrication tailored for wafer-scale integration. We measure a data rate1.6 times larger than previously reported for graphene. We scale the modulator's active area down to 22m, achieving a dynamic power consumption58fJ/bit, 3 times lower than previous graphene modulators and Mach-Zehnder modulators based on Si or lithium niobate. We show devices with0.037dB/Vm modulation efficiency,16 times better than previous demonstrations based on graphene. This paves the way to wafer-scale production of graphene modulators on Si useful for Tbit/s optical transceivers and energy-efficient AI
Cite
@article{arxiv.2506.03281,
title = {Graphene Electro-Absorption Modulators for Energy-Efficient and High-Speed Optical Transceivers},
author = {M. Tiberi and A. Montanaro and C. Wen and J. Zhang and O. Balci and S. M. Shinde and S. Sharma and A. Meersha and H. Shekhar and J. E. Muench and B. R. Conran and K. B. K. Teo and M. Ebert and X. Yan and Y. Tran and M. Banakar and C. Littlejohns and G. T. Reed and M. Romagnoli and A. Ruocco and V. Sorianello and A. C. Ferrari},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.03281},
year = {2025}
}