Integrated photonics is the key enabling technology for the “photonic chip” in optical communication system of the 21st century. This area is on the brink of exciting breakthroughs. The work by LIN Hongtao from the College of Information Science & Electronic Engineering and Skylar Deckoff-Jones and HU Juejun from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is recently selected as one of the 30 most intriguing research articles in optics and photonics in 2018 by Optics & Photonics News.

Schematic fabrication process flow to integrate chalcogenide glass photonic devices with graphene

In the original work titled “Chalcogenide glass-on-graphene photonics”, published in Nature Photonics, Prof. LIN and his colleagues innovatively introduced chalgogenide glass into photonic integration of 2D materials, which presents a new route for 2D material integration with planar photonics with improved fabrication yield and throughput. Futhermore, their technique also enables unconventional multilayer device geometries optimally designed for enhancing light–matter interactions in the 2D layers. Capitalizing on this facile integration method, they demonstrate a series of high-performance glass-on-graphene devices including ultra-broadband on-chip polarizers, energy-efficient thermo-optic switches, as well as graphene-based mid-infrared waveguide-integrated photodetectors and modulators. This versatile glass-on-2D-material platform show great promise to expedite and expand integration of 2D materials to enable new photonic functionalities.