Mechanical Modulation of Hybrid Graphene Microfiber Structure

Recently, the strain engineering of two-dimensional materials such as graphene has attracted considerable attention for its great potential in functional nanodevices. Here, we theoretically and experimentally investigate the strain manipulation of a graphene-integrated microfiber system for the first time. We analyze the influential factors of strain tuning, i.e., the geometrical parameters of the microfiber, the strain magnitude, and the probe-light wavelength. Moreover, we experimentally achieve in-line modulation as high as 30% with a moderate strain of ~5%, which is two orders of magnitude larger than previous results. The dynamic vibration response is also researched. The broadband, polarization-independent, cost-effective, strain-based modulator may find applications in low-speed modulation and strain sensing. Further, we believe that our platform may allow for all-in fiber engineering of graphene-analogue materials and provide new ideas for graphene-integrated flexible device design.