On-chip ultrafast plasmonic graphene hot electron bolometric photodetector

Abstract

We investigate waveguide-integrated plasmonic graphene photodetector operating based on the hot carrier photo-bolometric effect, which is characterized simultaneously by high responsivity on the scale of hundreds of AW-1 and high speed on the scale of 100s of GHz. We develop a theory of bolometric effect originating from the band nonparabolicity of graphene and estimate responsivity due to bolometric effect is shown to significantly surpass the responsivity of co-existing photo-conductive effect thus convincingly demonstrating the dominance of bolometric effect. Based on the theory we propose a novel detector configuration based on hybrid waveguide that allows for efficient absorption in the graphene over short distance and subsequently a large change of conductivity. The results demonstrate the potential of graphene for high-speed communication systems.