Glass-on-2-D-material photonics

Due to their extraordinary optoelectronic properties, 2-D materials have been identified as promising materials for integrated photonics. However, most 2-D material-integrated photonic devices demonstrated to date are fabricated by transferring a layer of 2-D material on top of already fabricated photonic structures, which limits full utilization of their capability. Here we introduce a new photonic integration approach via direct deposition and fabrication of chalcogenide glass photonic devices on 2-D materials.We have applied the new process to fabricate high-performance, broadband on-chip graphene-based optical polarizers with a high contrast ratio of 740 dB/cm leveraging the remarkable optical anisotropy of graphene, and thermo-optic switches with a record heating efficiency of 10 nm/mW using in-waveguide low-loss (20 dB/cm) graphene transparent electrodes. The low processing temperatures of chalcogenide glasses further enables monolithic integration on plastics and the first waveguide-integrated graphene photodetector on flexible substrates. Last but not least, we have also demonstrated monolithic integration of chalcogenide photonic components on several other 2-D materials including WSe2, WS2, and MoTe2. The glass-on-2-D-material approach therefore provides a facile universal route for photonic integration based on 2-D materials