Nanoscale optical communications modulator and acousto-optic transduction with vibrating graphene and resonance energy transfer

Abstract

Due to copyright restrictions, the access to the full text of this article is only available via subscription.Graphene resonators are future promising in terms of ultra-low weight, high Young's modulus, strength and wideband resonance frequencies. Besides that, nanoscale optical wireless channels including visible light spectrum are alternatives to radio-frequency communications promising energy efficiency and high data rates. In this article, vibrating multi-layer graphene nanoelectromechanical resonators are combined with designed vibrating Forster resonance energy transfer (VFRET) mechanism to achieve a nanoscale acousto-optic modulator converting vibrations to multi-color photon emissions. The frequency, color and the vibration sensitivity of emission are tunable while vibrations are realized either passively or actively by exploiting acoustic, thermo-acoustic or opto-acoustic properties of graphene. The light is generated by FRET mechanism with oscillating donor-acceptor distance where donor molecules attached on graphene are chosen as CdSe/ZnS core-shell QDs with significant properties of broad absorption spectrum, large cross-sections, tunable emission spectra, size dependent emission wavelength, high photochemical stability and improved quantum yield. The designed modulator achieves acoustic and ultrasound frequencies between several KHz and tens of MHz and radiation power reaching several nanowatts with resonator sizes of hundreds of micrometers for ambient light intensity of 0.1 W/m2/nm. The proposed system promises significant applications including nanoscale acousto-optic communication, transduction, sensing, energy harvesting and biomedical nanoscale communications.Vestel Electronics Inc

Graphene-Based Acousto-Optic Sensors with Vibrating Resonance Energy Transfer and Applications

“…Mechanical designs utilizing graphene achieve high-performance nano-electromechanical systems (NEMS) with large Young's modulus (1 TPa for single layer graphene), ultra-low weight, low residual stress and large breaking strength, i.e., graphene strain allowing 25% without breaking [1]. Unique optical, electrical, physical and mechanical properties of graphene allow the designed resonators to be utilized in challenging applications, e.g., strain sensor, mass sensor, nanogenerators, transducers, photodetectors and novel NEMS devices [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8].…”

“…Nanoscale photonic solutions with a novel design for sensing, energy harvesting or communication purposes are recently presented in [3][4][5]8] with significant performances and rich set of applications. They utilize unique and unexploited features of graphene and quantum dots (QDs) combined with a special mechanical design.…”

“…QDs are future promising as donor-acceptor couples in next generation nanoscale devices [3-5, 8, 9]. More specifically, passive acousto-optic nanoscale optical modulator design is presented by exploiting high performance mechanical properties of graphene resonators and radiating photon emission from QDs with a novel method denoted by vibrating Förster Resonance Energy Transfer (VFRET) [4]. It promises high performance applications in biomedical, space and microfluidic monitoring and tracking areas while utilizing energy harvesting, low complexity and all-in-one acousto-optic transducer mechanical design.…”

“…VFRET mechanism uniquely exploits important properties of graphene resonators having wideband spectrum covering acoustic and ultrasound frequencies combined with special features of QDs, and FRET which is a nanoscale energy transfer process between two molecules denoted as donors and acceptors [4]. FRET utilized in a rich set of biological, physical and chemical applications such as monitoring cellular activities has also been utilized for nanoscale communication channels [10][11][12].…”

“…Semiconductor nanocrystal QDs form a unique cooperation with graphene resonators by utilizing high performance properties such as sharp and broad absorption spectrum, large absorption cross-sections, tunable emission spectra and wavelength, photochemical stability and photoluminescence quantum yield [13,14]. In [4], a modulator is designed to be utilized in challenging applications for communications, sensing and energy harvesting with a scalable range including both nanoscale and macroscale dimensions. Ambient light sources with low power levels are utilized instead of laser sources in a nanoscale hybrid acousto-optic platform while periodically modulating nanoscale distance between donors attached on vibrating graphene and acceptors fixed on a support.…”