Hybrid/Integrated Silicon Photonics Based on 2D Materials in Optical Communication Nanosystems

Abstract

Silicon (Si) photonics have established as leading technologies in addressing the rapidly increasing demands of huge data transfer in optical communication systems with compact footprints, small power consumption, and ultradense bandwidth, which are driven by the next generation supercomputers and big data era. Particularly, Si photonics will penetrate into optical communication links at an ever-small scale, namely chip-to-chip and on-chip. However, the nanostructures made of Si with an indirect bandgap are not ideal candidates for on-chip light sources, modulators, and photodetectors, which most-frequently require optical materials with direct bandgap. Thanks to the advent of graphene, transition metal dichalcogenides and other two-dimensional (2D) materials, which can facilitate extraordinary progresses in improving device performance at the ultrathin scale, their integration with Si photonics furnishes a heterogeneous platform to construct fully functional and highly integrated photonic communication systems. In this work, the current advancements in the on-chip applications of Si photonics-2D materials heterostructures, inclusive of all essential chip-scale modules and integrated circuits, as well as the future prospective and challenges are reviewed and discussed. The present study sets out to objectively measure the feasibility of the hybrid integration between Si photonics and 2D materials in on-chip optical communications and the advanced applications beyond.

Recent progress of integrated circuits and optoelectronic chips

“…Nowadays photonic integration mainly relies on the following three integration platforms, i.e., InPbased integration, silicon photonic integration (SOI) and silicon nitride/silicon dioxide-based integration (Si 3 N 4 /SiO 2 ) [139][140][141][142]. Each of these three integration material platforms has unique advantages, but also has some disadvantages.…”

Fabrication Methods for Integrating 2D Materials

“…[47,51] They also exhibit strong optical absorption (> 10% per layer) as well as efficient PL. [34,48,53] In addition, monolayer hexagonal TMDCs exhibit unique valley dependent properties, such as valley coherence and valley-selective circular dichroism. [8,127] Further, TMDCs exhibit both large second and third-order optical nonlinearities that are dependent on the number of layers.…”

“…[30][31][32] The success of these devices has relied heavily on developing advanced integration fabrication techniquesfrom material synthesis to on-chip transfer, film patterning, and property tuning / modification. While 2D materials have been the subject of many previous reviews, [14,[33][34][35][36] these have predominantly focused on either the material aspects of 2D films or the specific applications, rather than the fabrication techniques. Here, we focus on the latter -review comprehensively the diverse methods used to fabricate chip-scale integrated devices incorporating 2D materials, highlighting the challenges and potential for large-scale production in industrial settings outside of the laboratory.…”

Ternary Transition Metal Dichalcogenides for High Power Vector Dissipative Soliton Ultrafast Fiber Laser

“…[13] On the other hand, potential photonic applications of two-dimensional (2D) nanomaterials have received increasing attention due to the extraordinary optical and electrical characteristics. [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21] Most of these, including graphene, MXene, metal-organic frameworks, transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs), topological insulators, group-VA mono-elemental materials, perovskites, and IIIA/IVA monochalcogenides, possessing outstanding nonlinear optical characteristics, have been extensively used as SAs in fiber lasers for the production of various kinds of solitons pulses. These show remarkable flexibility in ultrafast photonics with strong points of wideband optical absorption, reasonable damage threshold, adjustable modulation depth, and fast relaxation times.…”