Phase change materials (PCMs) have long been used as a storage medium in rewritable compact disk and later in random access memory. In recent years, integration of PCMs with nanophotonic structures has introduced a new paradigm for non‐volatile reconfigurable optics. However, the high loss of the archetypal PCM Ge2Sb2Te5in both visible and telecommunication wavelengths has fundamentally limited its applications. Sb2S3has recently emerged as a wide‐bandgap PCM with transparency windows ranging from 610 nm to near‐IR. In this paper, the strong optical phase modulation and low optical loss of Sb2S3are experimentally demonstrated for the first time in integrated photonic platforms at both 750 and 1550 nm. As opposed to silicon, the thermo‐optic coefficient of Sb2S3is shown to be negative, making the Sb2S3–Si hybrid platform less sensitive to thermal fluctuation. Finally, a Sb2S3integrated non‐volatile microring switch is demonstrated which can be tuned electrically between a high and low transmission state with a contrast over 30 dB. This work experimentally verifies prominent phase modification and low loss of Sb2S3in wavelength ranges relevant for both solid‐state quantum emitter and telecommunication, enabling potential applications such as optical field programmable gate array, post‐fabrication trimming, and large‐scale integrated quantum photonic network.
Reconfigurability of photonic integrated circuits (PICs) has become increasingly important due to the growing demands for electronic–photonic systems on a chip driven by emerging applications, including neuromorphic computing, quantum information, and microwave photonics. Success in these fields usually requires highly scalable photonic switching units as essential building blocks. Current photonic switches, however, mainly rely on materials with weak, volatile thermo‐optic or electro‐optic modulation effects, resulting in large footprints and high energy consumption. As a promising alternative, chalcogenide phase‐change materials (PCMs) exhibit strong optical modulation in a static, self‐holding fashion, but the scalability of present PCM‐integrated photonic applications is still limited by the poor optical or electrical actuation approaches. Here, with phase transitions actuated by in situ silicon PIN diode heaters, scalable nonvolatile electrically reconfigurable photonic switches using PCM‐clad silicon waveguides and microring resonators are demonstrated. As a result, intrinsically compact and energy‐efficient switching units operated with low driving voltages, near‐zero additional loss, and reversible switching with high endurance are obtained in a complementary metal‐oxide‐semiconductor (CMOS)‐compatible process. This work can potentially enable very large‐scale CMOS‐integrated programmable electronic–photonic systems such as optical neural networks and general‐purpose integrated photonic processors.
- Award ID(s):
- 1640986
- Publication Date:
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10455380
- Journal Name:
- Advanced Materials
- Volume:
- 32
- Issue:
- 31
- ISSN:
- 0935-9648
- Publisher:
- Wiley Blackwell (John Wiley & Sons)
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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