Journal
IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN QUANTUM ELECTRONICS
Volume 28, Issue 3, Pages -Publisher
IEEE-INST ELECTRICAL ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS INC
DOI: 10.1109/JSTQE.2021.3120713
Keywords
Phase change materials; Optical switches; Optical variables control; Optical refraction; Pulse modulation; Bonding; Silicon photonics; Phase change materials; silicon photonics; reconfigurable photonics
Categories
Funding
- National Science Foundation [NSF-1640986, NSF-2003509, NNCI-1542101, 1337840, 0335765]
- ONR-YIP Award
- DRAPER Labs
- Intel
- National Institutes of Health
- Molecular Engineering & Sciences Institute
- Clean Energy Institute
- Washington Research Foundation
- M. J. Murdock Charitable Trust
- Altatech
- ClassOne Technology
- GCEMarket
- SPTS
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The use of phase change materials in silicon photonics has been gaining attention due to their high refractive index contrast between two states, which can be reversibly switched and non-volatile. Progress has been made in developing photonic switches based on PCM for photonic integrated circuits, showing great potential for future applications in this field.
The traditional ways of tuning a silicon photonic network are mainly based on the thermo-optic effect or the free carrier dispersion. The drawbacks of these methods are the volatile nature and the extremely small change in the complex refractive index (Delta n<0.001). In order to achieve low energy consumption and smaller footprint for applications such as photonic memories, optical computing, programmable gate array, and optical neural network, it is essential that the two optical states of the system exhibit high optical contrast and remain non-volatile. Phase change materials (PCMs) such as Ge2Sb2Te5 provide an excellent solution, thanks to the drastic contrast in refractive index between two states which can be switched reversibly and in a non-volatile fashion. Here, we review the recent progress in the field of non-volatile reconfigurable silicon photonics based on PCMs. We start with a general introduction to the material properties of PCMs that have been exploited in integrated photonics and discuss their operating wavelengths. The various photonic switches that are built upon these PCMs are reviewed. Lastly, we review the recent applications of PCM-based photonic integrated circuits and discuss the potential future directions of this field.
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