High-speed, efficient, and compact electro-optic modulators for free space

Science Daily  June 7, 2022 Modulators based on metasurface architectures that modulate free-space light at gigahertz (GHz) speeds can boost flat optics technology by microwave electronics for active optics, diffractive computing, or optoelectronic control. An international team of researchers (USA – Harvard University, University of Washington, Switzerland) has demonstrated a modulator that consists of a thin layer of an organic electro-optic material deposited on top of a metasurface etched with sub-wavelength resonators integrated with microwave electronics. When a microwave field is applied to the electro-optical material, its refractive index changes, changing the intensity of light that is being transmitted by […]

Breaking the size and speed limit of modulators: The workhorses of the internet

Science Daily  April 13, 2020 Reducing the size of electro-optical modulators allows increased packaging density, which is vital on a chip. By heterogeneously adding a thin material layer of indium tin oxide to the silicon photonic waveguide chip, a team of researchers in the US (George Washington University, UT Austin) has demonstrated an optical index change 1,000 times larger than silicon. Unlike many designs based on resonators this spectrally-broadband device is stable against temperature changes and allows a single fiber-optic cable to carry multiple wavelengths of light, increasing the amount of data that can move through a system…read more. TECHNICAL […]