Photonic and Electro-Optical Devices, Sensors and Systems

Photonic and electro-optical devices harness the interplay of light and matter to generate, guide, modulate and detect optical signals for applications in communications, imaging, sensing and computing. Core components include sources (lasers, light-emitting diodes), modulators (electro-optic, acousto-optic and plasmonic structures), waveguides (integrated and fiber), detectors (photodiodes, avalanche photodiodes, photomultipliers) and complete systems such as spectrometers, optical coherence tomography heads and microwave photonic links. Advances in nanofabrication, novel materials (perovskites, van der Waals crystals, organic polymers) and active metasurfaces have pushed performance to terahertz bandwidths, femtojoule-per-bit energies, sub-picolitre sensor volumes and single-photon sensitivity. These technologies underpin next-generation data centres, portable bioimagers, full-duplex radio-over-fiber links and compact quantum photonic modules with global impact in healthcare, security, environmental monitoring and high-speed networks.

Research from Nature Portfolio

Resonant plasmonic micro-racetrack modulators have demonstrated electro-optic bandwidths approaching 176 GHz with sub-10 fJ bit^–1 energy and stable operation to 85 °C, offering low-loss, temperature-tolerant links for future data-centre interconnects. Ultrathin exciton-polariton Mach–Zehnder modulators based on few-layer WS₂ achieved −6.2 dB modulation depth in a 2 µm interaction length (<30 µm² footprint), pointing to sub-wavelength, low-voltage switches for on-chip AI accelerators. In X-ray imaging, solution-grown methylammonium lead iodide single-crystal detectors operating at zero bias attained single-photon counting, 88 % detection efficiency at 18 keV and a noise equivalent dose of 90 pGy_air, enabling high-resolution, low-dose medical radiography with year-long stability.

Photonic and Electro-Optical Devices, Sensors and Systems publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in photonic and electro-optical devices, sensors and systems across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Electro-optic modulation: The alteration of light’s phase or amplitude by an applied electric field via the Pockels or Kerr effects in nonlinear materials.

Spurious-free dynamic range (SFDR): The range over which a photonic link transmits signals without distortion products above the noise floor, typically expressed in dB·Hz^2/3.

Quality factor (Q): A dimensionless measure of a resonator’s stored versus lost energy per cycle, dictating linewidth and storage time.

Photocurrent responsivity: The ratio of output current to incident optical power, in A W⁻¹, indicating detector sensitivity.

Mobility-lifetime product (μτ): The product of charge-carrier mobility and lifetime in a photodetector material, governing carrier-collection efficiency and detector gain.

Refractive index (n): A material parameter defining the phase velocity of light relative to its speed in vacuum, affecting waveguiding and dispersion.

References

1. Resonant plasmonic micro-racetrack modulators with high bandwidth and high temperature tolerance. Nature Photonics (2023).
2. Ultra-compact exciton polariton modulator based on van der Waals semiconductors. Nature Communications (2024).
3. Stable perovskite single-crystal X-ray imaging detectors with single-photon sensitivity. Nature Photonics (2023).
4. CMOS optoelectronic spectrometer based on photonic integrated circuit for in vivo 3D optical coherence tomography. PhotoniX (2024).
5. Quantum annealing-aided design of an ultrathin-metamaterial optical diode. Nano Convergence (2024).
6. Linearity optimization of multi-octave analog photonic links based on power weighting, polarization multiplexing and bias control.. Optics Express (2021).