Coupling-assisted Epsilon-Near-Zero Material based Energy-efficient Electro-Absorption Modulator

Optical modulators are crucial elements for deciding the overall capacity of an integrated photonic system. We report a compact and energy-efficient electro-absorption modulator. The proposed coupling-assisted design consists of an input silicon rib waveguide and an epsilon-near-zero material based hybrid plasmonic waveguide. With a 17 μm active device length, we achieve energy consumption as low as 62.2 fJ/bit while maintaining a modulation bandwidth of 25.6 GHz and ~10 dB extinction ratio at 1.55 μm wavelength.