Waveguide-integrated mid-infrared photodetection using graphene on a scalable chalcogenide glass platform

Abstract

The development of compact and fieldable mid-infrared (mid-IR) spectroscopy devices represents a critical challenge for distributed sensing with applications from gas leak detection to environmental monitoring. Recent work has focused on mid-IR photonic integrated circuit (PIC) sensing platforms and waveguide-integrated mid-IR light sources and detectors based on semiconductors such as PbTe, black phosphorus and tellurene. However, material bandgaps and reliance on SiO2 substrates limit operation to wavelengths λ ≲ 4 μm. Here we overcome these challenges with a chalcogenide glass-on-CaF2 PIC architecture incorporating split-gate photothermoelectric graphene photodetectors. Our design extends operation to λ = 5.2 μm with a Johnson noise-limited noise-equivalent power of 1.1 nW/Hz1/2, no fall-off in photoresponse up to f = 1 MHz, and a predicted 3-dB bandwidth of f3dB > 1 GHz. This mid-IR PIC platform readily extends to longer wavelengths and opens the door to applications from distributed gas sensing and portable dual comb spectroscopy to weather-resilient free space optical communications.

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
Jul 07, 2022
Source ID
10.1038/s41467-022-31607-7

Entities

People

  • A-Y Lu
  • Dirk Englund
  • Hongtao Lin
  • Jing Kong
  • Jordan Goldstein
  • Juejun Hu
  • Kathleen A. Richardson
  • Marek Hempel
  • Skylar Deckoff-jones
  • Tomás Palacios

Organizations

  • Air Force Office of Scientific Research
  • Army Research Office
  • National Science Foundation

Tags

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Astronomy/Astrophysics
  • Distributed Systems and Data Platform Development
  • Quantum Dot Semiconductor Device Photonics and Graphene Optoelectronic Materials and THz Physics.

Technology Areas

  • Microelectronics
  • Microelectronics - Graphene
  • Space