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Nobile N, Erickson JR, Ríos C, Zhang Y, Hu J, Vitale SA, Xiong F, Youngblood N. Time-Resolved Temperature Mapping Leveraging the Strong Thermo-Optic Effect in Phase-Change Materials. ACS PHOTONICS 2023; 10:3576-3585. [PMID: 37869555 PMCID: PMC10588450 DOI: 10.1021/acsphotonics.3c00620] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/09/2023] [Indexed: 10/24/2023]
Abstract
Optical phase-change materials are highly promising for emerging applications such as tunable metasurfaces, reconfigurable photonic circuits, and non-von Neumann computing. However, these materials typically require both high melting temperatures and fast quenching rates to reversibly switch between their crystalline and amorphous phases: a significant challenge for large-scale integration. In this work, we use temperature-dependent ellipsometry to study the thermo-optic effect in GST and use these results to demonstrate an experimental technique that leverages the thermo-optic effect in GST to enable both spatial and temporal thermal measurements of two common electro-thermal microheater designs currently used by the phase-change community. Our approach shows excellent agreement between experimental results and numerical simulations and provides a noninvasive method for rapid characterization of electrically programmable phase-change devices.
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Affiliation(s)
- Nicholas
A. Nobile
- University
of Pittsburgh, Deppartments of
Electrical and Computer Engineering, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15261, United States
| | - John R. Erickson
- University
of Pittsburgh, Deppartments of
Electrical and Computer Engineering, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15261, United States
| | - Carlos Ríos
- University
of Maryland, Departments of
Materials Science and Engineering, College Park, Maryland 20742, United States
- University
of Maryland, Institute for Research
in Electronics and Applied Physics, College Park, Maryland 20742, United States
| | - Yifei Zhang
- MIT, Departments of
Materials Science and Engineering, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, United States
| | - Juejun Hu
- MIT, Departments of
Materials Science and Engineering, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, United States
| | - Steven A. Vitale
- Advanced
Materials and Microsystems Group, MIT Lincoln
Laboratory, Lexington, Massachusetts 02421, United States
| | - Feng Xiong
- University
of Pittsburgh, Deppartments of
Electrical and Computer Engineering, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15261, United States
| | - Nathan Youngblood
- University
of Pittsburgh, Deppartments of
Electrical and Computer Engineering, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15261, United States
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Ruan J, Gao Y, Song C, Xu P, Zhang W, Chen Y, Shen X. Compact reconfigurable on-chip polarization beam splitters enabled by phase change material. OPTICS EXPRESS 2023; 31:33091-33102. [PMID: 37859096 DOI: 10.1364/oe.498920] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/26/2023] [Accepted: 09/12/2023] [Indexed: 10/21/2023]
Abstract
In this paper, we present the design of a compact reconfigurable polarization beam splitter (PBS) enabled by ultralow-loss phase-changing Sb2Se3. By harnessing the phase-change-mediated mode coupling in a directional coupler (DC), guided light with different polarizations could be routed into different paths and this routing could be dynamically switched upon the phase change of Sb2Se3. With an optimized DC region, the proposed PBS demonstrates efficient polarization splitting with crosstalk less than -21.3 dB and insertion loss less than 0.16 dB at 1550 nm for both phase states of Sb2Se3, and features energy efficient property benefitting from the nonvolatile phase change of Sb2Se3, which holds great potentials for on-chip applications involving polarization control, including polarization-division multiplexing system, quantum photonics, microwave photonics, etc.
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Chen R, Fang Z, Perez C, Miller F, Kumari K, Saxena A, Zheng J, Geiger SJ, Goodson KE, Majumdar A. Non-volatile electrically programmable integrated photonics with a 5-bit operation. Nat Commun 2023; 14:3465. [PMID: 37308496 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-39180-3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 13] [Impact Index Per Article: 13.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/21/2023] [Accepted: 06/02/2023] [Indexed: 06/14/2023] Open
Abstract
Scalable programmable photonic integrated circuits (PICs) can potentially transform the current state of classical and quantum optical information processing. However, traditional means of programming, including thermo-optic, free carrier dispersion, and Pockels effect result in either large device footprints or high static energy consumptions, significantly limiting their scalability. While chalcogenide-based non-volatile phase-change materials (PCMs) could mitigate these problems thanks to their strong index modulation and zero static power consumption, they often suffer from large absorptive loss, low cyclability, and lack of multilevel operation. Here, we report a wide-bandgap PCM antimony sulfide (Sb2S3)-clad silicon photonic platform simultaneously achieving low loss (<1.0 dB), high extinction ratio (>10 dB), high cyclability (>1600 switching events), and 5-bit operation. These Sb2S3-based devices are programmed via on-chip silicon PIN diode heaters within sub-ms timescale, with a programming energy density of [Formula: see text]. Remarkably, Sb2S3 is programmed into fine intermediate states by applying multiple identical pulses, providing controllable multilevel operations. Through dynamic pulse control, we achieve 5-bit (32 levels) operations, rendering 0.50 ± 0.16 dB per step. Using this multilevel behavior, we further trim random phase error in a balanced Mach-Zehnder interferometer.
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Affiliation(s)
- Rui Chen
- Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, 98195, USA.
| | - Zhuoran Fang
- Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, 98195, USA
| | - Christopher Perez
- Department of Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA
| | - Forrest Miller
- Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, 98195, USA
| | - Khushboo Kumari
- Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, 98195, USA
| | - Abhi Saxena
- Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, 98195, USA
| | - Jiajiu Zheng
- Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, 98195, USA
| | - Sarah J Geiger
- The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA
| | - Kenneth E Goodson
- Department of Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA
| | - Arka Majumdar
- Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, 98195, USA.
- Department of Physics, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, 98195, USA.
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Su Y, Liu D, Zhang M. Sb 2Se 3-assisted reconfigurable broadband Y-junction. OPTICS EXPRESS 2022; 30:40379-40388. [PMID: 36298972 DOI: 10.1364/oe.473157] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/12/2022] [Accepted: 10/06/2022] [Indexed: 06/16/2023]
Abstract
A Y-junction is commonly used in on-chip systems because of its excellent broadband characteristic. However, due to the lack of regulation methods, in most cases Y-junctions are used as passive components. In this work we propose a reconfigurable broadband Y-junction based on phase change material. When Sb2Se3 layers on two branches are at different states, the Y-junction is asymmetric and works as a reconfigurable dual-mode (de)multiplexer. When both Sb2Se3 layers are amorphous, the Y-junction is symmetric and works as a dual-mode 3-dB power splitter. To achieve quasi-adiabatic evolution for both states in a short device length, we propose a segmented fast quasi-adiabatic method. By dividing the gap region into multiple segments and optimizing the geometry and length of each segment, the proposed device achieves bandwidth > 100 nm (crosstalk < -20 dB) in a compact footprint of 19.3 × 3 µm2. The simulation result shows that at center wavelength of 1550 nm, the crosstalk and insertion loss of our device are < -41 dB and <0.12 dB, respectively, under asymmetric mode (de)multiplex state, and the excess loss is within 0.06 dB under symmetric power splitting state. The proposed device may contribute to the realization of a high-bandwidth, flexible mode-division-multiplexing network.
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Song C, Gao Y, Wang G, Chen Y, Xu P, Gu C, Shi Y, Shen X. Compact nonvolatile 2×2 photonic switch based on two-mode interference. OPTICS EXPRESS 2022; 30:30430-30440. [PMID: 36242147 DOI: 10.1364/oe.467736] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/13/2022] [Accepted: 07/20/2022] [Indexed: 06/16/2023]
Abstract
On-chip nonvolatile photonic switches enabled by phase change materials (PCMs) are promising building blocks for power-efficient programmable photonic integrated circuits. However, large absorption loss in conventional PCMs (such as Ge2Sb2Te5) interacting with weak evanescent waves in silicon waveguides usually leads to high insertion loss and a large device footprint. In this paper, we propose a 2×2 photonic switch based on two-mode interference in a multimode slot waveguide (MSW) with ultralow loss Sb2S3 integrated inside the slot region. The MSW supports two lowest order TE modes, i.e., symmetric TE00 and antisymmetric TE01 modes, and the phase of Sb2S3 could actively tune two-mode interference behavior. Owing to the enhanced electric field in the slot, the interaction strength between modal field and Sb2S3 could be boosted, and a photonic switch containing a ∼9.4 µm-long Sb2S3-MSW hybrid section could effectively alter the light transmission between bar and cross ports upon the phase change of Sb2S3 with a cross talk (CT) less than -13.6 dB and an insertion loss (IL) less than 0.26 dB in the telecommunication C-band. Especially at 1550 nm, the CT in the amorphous (crystalline) Sb2S3 is -36.1 dB (-31.1 dB) with a corresponding IL of 0.073 dB (0.055 dB). The proposed 2×2 photonic switch is compact in size and compatible with on-chip microheaters, which may find promising applications in reconfigurable photonic devices.
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