Thermally tunable microfiber knot resonator with flexible graphene heater

Abstract

Efficiently tuning the output intensity of an optical device is of vital importance for the establishment of optical interconnects and networks. Thermo-optical modulation is an easily implemented and convenient approach and has been widely employed in photonic devices. In this paper, we proposed a novel thermo-optical modulator based on a microfiber knot resonator (MKR) and graphene heater. Upon applying voltage to graphene, the resonant property of the MKR could be thermally tuned with a maximum phase shift of 2.1π. Intensity modulation shows a fast optical response time thanks to the high thermal conductivity of graphene and the thin microfiber diameter of the MKR.