Electrically tunable switching based on photonic-crystal waveguide loaded graphene stacks

Through applying gate voltage to tune the chemical potential of graphene, the relative permittivity of multilayer graphene/Al2O3 stack can be dynamically adjusted over a wide range. In this paper, we mainly design novel photonic-crystal waveguides based on graphene stacks including a side-coupled waveguide with two defect cavities as well as a two-channel multiport waveguide, and aim to modulate the propagation of incident light wave via controlling the permittivity of graphene stack. It is demonstrated according to simulations that tunable switching property can be achieved in our proposed structures, such as blue shift of resonant stopband, adjustable coupled-resonator-induced transparency, and tunability of output quantity. These results could be very instructive for the potential applications in high-density integrated optical devices, photoelectric transducer, and laser pulse limiters.