Nonvolatile waveguide transmission tuning with electrically-driven ultra-small GST phase-change material

Hanyu Zhang; Linjie Zhou; Jian Xu; Ningning Wang; Hao Hu; Liangjun Lu; B M A Rahman; Jianping Chen

doi:10.1016/j.scib.2019.04.035

Nonvolatile waveguide transmission tuning with electrically-driven ultra-small GST phase-change material

Sci Bull (Beijing). 2019 Jun 15;64(11):782-789. doi: 10.1016/j.scib.2019.04.035. Epub 2019 May 3.

Authors

Hanyu Zhang¹, Linjie Zhou², Jian Xu¹, Ningning Wang¹, Hao Hu¹, Liangjun Lu¹, B M A Rahman³, Jianping Chen¹

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Advanced Optical Communication Systems and Networks, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Navigation and Location Services, Shanghai Institute for Advanced Communication and Data Science, Department of Electronic Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China.
² State Key Laboratory of Advanced Optical Communication Systems and Networks, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Navigation and Location Services, Shanghai Institute for Advanced Communication and Data Science, Department of Electronic Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China. Electronic address: ljzhou@sjtu.edu.cn.
³ Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, City, University of London, London EC 1V 0HB, UK.

PMID: 36659548
DOI: 10.1016/j.scib.2019.04.035

Abstract

Low-power reconfigurable optical circuits are highly demanded to satisfy a variety of different applications. Conventional electro-optic and thermo-optic refractive index tuning methods in silicon photonics are not suitable for reconfiguration of optical circuits due to their high static power consumption and volatility. We propose and demonstrate a nonvolatile tuning method by utilizing the reversible phase change property of GST integrated on top of the silicon waveguide. The phase change is enabled by applying electrical pulses to the μm-sized GST active region in a sandwich structure. The experimental results show that the optical transmission of the silicon waveguide can be tuned by controlling the phase state of GST.

Keywords: Chalcogenide Ge(2)Sb(2)Te(5); Integrated optics devices; Nonvolatile optical switch; Phase change material.