50 GBit/s Photodetectors Based on Wafer-Scale Graphene for Integrated Silicon Photonic Communication Systems

Optical data links are the backbone of today's telecommunication infrastructure. The seamless integration of electronic and optic components into one fabrication environment and, eventually, one chip is a major route to further increase the system performance. Here, we present large-scale graphene based photodetectors on silicon-on-insulator waveguides operating in the C-band at 1550nm. The detectors have a -3 dB bandwidth of 41 GHz and operate at data rates up to 50 GBit/s without dark current, surpassing by far previous graphene based photodetectors. Our results demonstrate that Graphene based photodetectors can be realized in a production relevant environment on silicon-on-insulator waveguides with state-of-the-art operation speed, making them highly attractive for future data communication systems.