Graphene nano-ribbon waveguides of record-small mode area and ultra-high effective refractive indices for future VLSI

Abstract

Electronics circuits keep shrinking in dimensions, as requested by Moore's law. In contrast, photonic waveguides and circuit elements still have lateral dimensions on the order of the wavelength. A key to make photonics have a microelectronics-like development is a drastic reduction of size. To achieve this, we need a low-loss nanoscale waveguide with a drastically reduced mode area and an ultra-high effective refractive index. For this purpose, we propose here several low-loss waveguide structures based on graphene nano-ribbons. An extremely small mode area (~10(-7)λ(0)(2), one order smaller than the smallest mode area of any waveguide that has ever been reported in the literature; here λ(0) is the operating wavelength in vacuum) and an extremely large effective refractive index (several hundreds) are achieved. As a device example, a nano-ring cavity of ultra-small size (with a diameter of ~10(-2)λ(0)) is designed. Our study paves the way for future VLSI (very-large-scale integration) optoelectronics.