Zhang Hanyu, Yang Xing, Lu Liangjun, Chen Jianping, Rahman B M A, Zhou Linjie
Opt Express. 2021 Feb 1;29(3):3503-3514. doi: 10.1364/OE.413660.
In the past decades, silicon photonic integrated circuits (PICs) have been considered a promising approach to solve the bandwidth bottleneck in optical communications and interconnections. Despite the rapid advances, large-scale PICs still face a series of technical challenges, such as large footprint, high power consumption, and lack of optical memory, resulting from the active tuning methods used to control the optical waves. These challenges can be partially addressed by combining chalcogenide phase change materials (PCMs) such as GeSbTe (GST) with silicon photonics, especially applicable in reconfigurable optical circuit applications due to the nonvolatile nature of the GST. We systematically investigate the phase change process induced by optical and electrical pulses in GST-loaded silicon waveguide and multimode interferometer. Using optical pulse excitation to amorphize GST has a clear advantage in terms of operation speed and energy efficiency, while electrical pulse excitation is more suitable for large-scale integration because it does not require complex optical routing. This study helps us better understand the phase change process and push forward the further development of the Si-GST hybrid photonic integration platform, bringing in new potential applications.
在过去几十年里，硅光子集成电路（PICs）被认为是解决光通信和互连中带宽瓶颈的一种有前途的方法。尽管取得了快速进展，但大规模PICs仍然面临一系列技术挑战，例如由于用于控制光波的有源调谐方法导致的占用面积大、功耗高以及缺乏光存储器。通过将诸如锗锑碲（GST）等硫族化物相变材料（PCMs）与硅光子学相结合，可以部分解决这些挑战，由于GST的非易失性，这尤其适用于可重构光电路应用。我们系统地研究了加载GST的硅波导和多模干涉仪中光脉冲和电脉冲引起的相变过程。就操作速度和能量效率而言，使用光脉冲激发使GST非晶化具有明显优势，而电脉冲激发更适合大规模集成，因为它不需要复杂的光路。这项研究有助于我们更好地理解相变过程，并推动硅 - GST混合光子集成平台的进一步发展，带来新的潜在应用。
