Developments of cavity-controlled devices with graphene and graphene nanoribbon for optoelectronic applications

Recent years have witnessed many exciting breakthroughs in graphene as a promising material in photonics and optoelectronics. The wonderful optical properties of graphene afford multiple functions of signal emitting, transmitting, modulating, and detection to be realized in one material. The use of cavity to manipulate photon emission and absorption of graphene has opened unprecedented opportunities for realizing functional optoelectronic devices and also quantum photonic devices. This chapter provides an introduction to physical properties of graphene photonics, and then reviews the latest experimental and theoretical progresses on the implementation of graphene into cavity-controlled graphene phototransistors and graphene nanoribbon photodetectors as well. Particular emphasis is placed on cavity-controlled graphene nanoribbon optoelectronic devices, to integrate graphene nanoribbon photonics onto cavities to realize multiple functions of light creation, routing, modulation, computing, and detection enabled by the tunable quasiparticle bandgap and dynamical conductivity of graphene nanoribbon. These recent pioneering developments open up a route toward both the integration of graphene in hybrid silicon photonic circuits to embrace the use of monolithic electronic silicon integrated circuits and system in a "digital" optical communication network, and the implementation of subterahertz wireless communication system as well, in order to maximize system functionality, improve service flexibility, and simplify network operations.