Room-temperature graphene sub-terahertz detector integrated on a silicon dielectric waveguide
Terahertz (THz) photonics offers a promising platform for next-generation 6G wireless communications, on-chip spectrometers, and non-invasive biomedical sensors. In the near- and mid-infrared, monolithically integrated photodetectors are a cornerstone of photonic integrated circuits (PICs). In the THz range, however, such integration on low-loss dielectric waveguides remains an open challenge: to date, room-temperature on-waveguide detection has been realized only through hybrid flip-chip assembly of discrete elements, which leads to poor mode coupling, larger footprint, and reduced mechanical stability. Here we address this gap by demonstrating a room-temperature graphene sub-THz detector monolithically integrated on a high-resistivity silicon dielectric waveguide for D-band (110-170 GHz) operation. We couple an hBN-encapsulated graphene channel to the guided mode using a tapered slot-line antenna patterned directly onto the silicon surface. The detector achieves a voltage responsivity of 11.5 V/W and a 3 dB bandwidth of 1.94 GHz, with the latter currently limited by parasitic inductance of the readout interconnects rather than by the intrinsic graphene response. This platform provides a practical pathway to fully integrated room-temperature THz photonic circuits, where electrostatic gating and impedance matching can improve both responsivity and bandwidth by roughly an order of magnitude.