Wafer-scale waveguide-integrated graphene optoelectronic mixers

Optoelectronic mixers enable efficient frequency conversion and are essential components of future communication modules, radar systems, antenna arrays, and high-speed signal processing. A promising material for optoelectronic mixing is graphene, offering significant advantages over traditional electrical or optoelectronic mixers, such as higher operational frequencies, lower power consumption, broader bandwidths, and a smaller device footprint. Here, we report the wafer-scale realization of graphene-based optoelectronic mixers integrated on a 150 mm silicon-on-insulator photonic platform, achieving a mixing performance of − 47 dB up to 67 GHz. The performance of our devices exceeds that of reported wafer-scale graphene optoelectronic mixers by 20 dB. This enhanced efficiency results from the direct integration of graphene onto optical waveguides, which increases the optical absorption of graphene through evanescent field coupling along the waveguide. The wafer-scale approach resulted in approximately one thousand fully functional mixers, and enabled a statistically relevant number of measurements across the wafer to assess the mixers’ performance. Furthermore, our approach facilitates the miniaturization of optoelectronic mixers into integrated optoelectronic circuits on chip.