Journal
NATURE NANOTECHNOLOGY
Volume 17, Issue 8, Pages 842-+Publisher
NATURE PORTFOLIO
DOI: 10.1038/s41565-022-01153-w
Keywords
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Funding
- National Science Foundation [NNCI-1542101, NNCI-2025489, NSF-1640986, NSF-2003509]
- ONR-YIP Award
- DARPA-YFA Award
- Draper Laboratory
- Intel
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Researchers have demonstrated a non-volatile electrically reconfigurable silicon photonic platform that utilizes a monolayer graphene heater for high energy efficiency. The graphene-assisted photonic switches showed endurance of over 1,000 cycles and at least a 20-fold reduction in switching energy compared with the state of the art. This study shows that graphene is a reliable and energy-efficient heater compatible with dielectric platforms for technologically relevant non-volatile programmable silicon photonics.
Silicon photonics is evolving from laboratory research to real-world applications with the potential to transform many technologies, including optical neural networks and quantum information processing. A key element for these applications is a reconfigurable switch operating at ultra-low programming energy-a challenging proposition for traditional thermo-optic or free carrier switches. Recent advances in non-volatile programmable silicon photonics based on phase-change materials (PCMs) provide an attractive solution to energy-efficient photonic switches with zero static power, but the programming energy density remains high (hundreds of attojoules per cubic nanometre). Here we demonstrate a non-volatile electrically reconfigurable silicon photonic platform leveraging a monolayer graphene heater with high energy efficiency and endurance. In particular, we show a broadband switch based on the technologically mature PCM Ge2Sb2Te5 and a phase shifter employing the emerging low-loss PCM Sb2Se3. The graphene-assisted photonic switches exhibited an endurance of over 1,000 cycles and a programming energy density of 8.7 +/- 1.4 aJ nm(-3), that is, within an order of magnitude of the PCM thermodynamic switching energy limit (similar to 1.2 aJ nm(-3)) and at least a 20-fold reduction in switching energy compared with the state of the art. Our work shows that graphene is a reliable and energy-efficient heater compatible with dielectric platforms, including Si3N4, for technologically relevant non-volatile programmable silicon photonics.
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