Waveguide-integrated electroluminescent carbon nanotubes

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the integration of electrically-driven carbon nanotube light sources directly into photonic waveguides, enabling on-chip broadband emission with controllable spectral properties for compact optoelectronic systems.

Contribution

It introduces a wafer-scale, waveguide-integrated carbon nanotube light source with on-chip spectral control, advancing integrated optoelectronics.

Findings

Light from carbon nanotubes can be directly coupled into waveguides.

Spectral properties of the emission can be tuned on-chip.

The integrated sources operate over centimeter distances.

Abstract

Carbon based optoelectronic devices promise to revolutionize modern integrated circuits by combining outstanding electrical and optical properties into a unified technology. By coupling nanoelectronic devices to nanophotonic structures functional components such as nanoscale light emitting diodes, narrow-band thermal emitters, cavity controlled detectors and wideband electro optic modulators can be realized for chipscale information processing. These devices not only allow the light-matter interaction of low-dimensional systems to be studied, but also provide fundamental building blocks for high bandwidth on-chip communication. Here we demonstrate how light from an electrically-driven carbon-nanotube can be coupled directly into a photonic waveguide architecture. We realize wafer scale, broadband sources integrated with nanophotonic circuits allowing for propagation of light over centimeter distances. Moreover, we show that the spectral properties of the emitter can be controlled directly on chip with passive devices using Mach-Zehnder interferometers and grating structures. The direct, near-field coupling of electrically generated light into a waveguide, opposed to far-field fiber coupling of external light sources, opens new avenues for compact optoelectronic systems in a CMOS compatible framework.