Lee June Sang, Farmakidis Nikolaos, Wright C David, Bhaskaran Harish
Department of Materials, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
Department of Engineering, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK.
Sci Adv. 2022 Jun 17;8(24):eabn9459. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.abn9459. Epub 2022 Jun 15.
Wavelength and polarization are two fundamental properties of light within which information can be encoded and (de)multiplexed. While wavelength-selective systems have widely proliferated, polarization-addressable active photonics has not seen notable progress, primarily because tunable and polarization-selective nanostructures have been elusive. Here, we introduce hybridized-active-dielectric (HAD) nanowires to achieve polarization-selective tunability. We then demonstrate the ability to use polarization as a parameter to selectively modulate the conductance of individual nanowires within a multi-nanowire system. By using polarization as the tunable vector, we show matrix-vector multiplication in a nanowire device configuration. While our HAD nanowires use phase-change materials as the active material, this concept is readily generalized to other active materials hybridized with dielectrics and thus has the potential in a broad range of applications from photonic memories and routing to polarization-multiplexed computing.
波长和偏振是光的两个基本属性，信息可以在其中进行编码和（解）复用。虽然波长选择系统已广泛普及，但偏振可寻址有源光子学尚未取得显著进展，主要原因是可调谐且偏振选择性的纳米结构一直难以实现。在此，我们引入混合有源电介质（HAD）纳米线以实现偏振选择性可调谐性。然后，我们展示了将偏振作为参数来选择性调制多纳米线系统中单个纳米线电导的能力。通过将偏振用作可调矢量，我们在纳米线器件配置中展示了矩阵 - 矢量乘法。虽然我们的HAD纳米线使用相变材料作为活性材料，但这一概念很容易推广到与电介质混合的其他活性材料，因此在从光子存储器和路由到偏振复用计算的广泛应用中具有潜力。
