Reconfigurable optical logic in silicon platform

M A Ruhul Fatin; Dusan Gostimirovic; Winnie N Ye

doi:10.1038/s41598-024-56463-x

Reconfigurable optical logic in silicon platform

Sci Rep. 2024 Mar 11;14(1):5950. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-56463-x.

Authors

M A Ruhul Fatin¹, Dusan Gostimirovic², Winnie N Ye²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Electronics, Carleton University, 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, ON, K1S 5B6, Canada. ruhulfatin103@gmail.com.
² Department of Electronics, Carleton University, 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, ON, K1S 5B6, Canada.

Abstract

In this paper, we present a novel, scalable, and reconfigurable optical switch that performs multiple computational logic functions simultaneously. The free-carrier depletion effect is used to perform non-volatile switching operations due to its high speed and low power consumption. We adopt the concept of optical memory using a phase-change material to realize the non-volatile reconfigurability without a constant power supply, in addition to providing a large operating bandwidth required for reconfigurability. The proposed reconfigurable optical logic architecture is realized in a compact microdisk resonator configuration, utilizing both the carrier-depletion-based modulation and phase-change optical memory. This is the first time these two modulation schemes are implemented in the same optical microdisk for the purpose of reconfigurable optical logic.