A new family of ultralow loss reversible phase‐change materials for photonic integrated circuits: Sb2S3 and Sb2Se3
A new family of ultralow loss reversible phase‐change materials for photonic integrated circuits: Sb2S3 and Sb2Se3
Phase‐change materials (PCMs) are seeing tremendous interest for their use in reconfigurable photonic devices; however, the most common PCMs exhibit a large absorption loss in one or both states. Here, Sb2S3 and Sb2Se3 are demonstrated as a class of low loss, reversible alternatives to the standard commercially available chalcogenide PCMs. A contrast of refractive index of Δn = 0.60 for Sb2S3 and Δn = 0.77 for Sb2Se3 is reported, while maintaining very low losses (k < 10−5) in the telecommunications C‐band at 1550 nm. With a stronger absorption in the visible spectrum, Sb2Se3 allows for reversible optical switching using conventional visible wavelength lasers. Here, a stable switching endurance of better than 4000 cycles is demonstrated. To deal with the essentially zero intrinsic absorption losses, a new figure of merit (FOM) is introduced taking into account the measured waveguide losses when integrating these materials onto a standard silicon photonics platform. The FOM of 29 rad phase shift per dB of loss for Sb2Se3 outperforms Ge2Sb2Te5 by two orders of magnitude and paves the way for on‐chip programmable phase control. These truly low‐loss switchable materials open up new directions in programmable integrated photonic circuits, switchable metasurfaces, and nanophotonic devices.
integrated photonics, metasurfaces, nanophotonics, optical switching, phase-change materials
Delaney, Matthew
46e88672-435e-4f50-8df2-2aed6f3edbcd
Zeimpekis, Ioannis
a2c354ec-3891-497c-adac-89b3a5d96af0
Lawson, Daniel
e26cb19c-c680-46b9-a551-f0b584694a12
Hewak, Daniel W.
87c80070-c101-4f7a-914f-4cc3131e3db0
Muskens, Otto L.
2284101a-f9ef-4d79-8951-a6cda5bfc7f9
1 September 2020
Delaney, Matthew
46e88672-435e-4f50-8df2-2aed6f3edbcd
Zeimpekis, Ioannis
a2c354ec-3891-497c-adac-89b3a5d96af0
Lawson, Daniel
e26cb19c-c680-46b9-a551-f0b584694a12
Hewak, Daniel W.
87c80070-c101-4f7a-914f-4cc3131e3db0
Muskens, Otto L.
2284101a-f9ef-4d79-8951-a6cda5bfc7f9
Delaney, Matthew, Zeimpekis, Ioannis, Lawson, Daniel, Hewak, Daniel W. and Muskens, Otto L.
(2020)
A new family of ultralow loss reversible phase‐change materials for photonic integrated circuits: Sb2S3 and Sb2Se3.
Advanced Functional Materials, 30 (36), [2002447].
(doi:10.1002/adfm.202002447).
Abstract
Phase‐change materials (PCMs) are seeing tremendous interest for their use in reconfigurable photonic devices; however, the most common PCMs exhibit a large absorption loss in one or both states. Here, Sb2S3 and Sb2Se3 are demonstrated as a class of low loss, reversible alternatives to the standard commercially available chalcogenide PCMs. A contrast of refractive index of Δn = 0.60 for Sb2S3 and Δn = 0.77 for Sb2Se3 is reported, while maintaining very low losses (k < 10−5) in the telecommunications C‐band at 1550 nm. With a stronger absorption in the visible spectrum, Sb2Se3 allows for reversible optical switching using conventional visible wavelength lasers. Here, a stable switching endurance of better than 4000 cycles is demonstrated. To deal with the essentially zero intrinsic absorption losses, a new figure of merit (FOM) is introduced taking into account the measured waveguide losses when integrating these materials onto a standard silicon photonics platform. The FOM of 29 rad phase shift per dB of loss for Sb2Se3 outperforms Ge2Sb2Te5 by two orders of magnitude and paves the way for on‐chip programmable phase control. These truly low‐loss switchable materials open up new directions in programmable integrated photonic circuits, switchable metasurfaces, and nanophotonic devices.
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More information
Accepted/In Press date: 15 May 2020
e-pub ahead of print date: 9 July 2020
Published date: 1 September 2020
Additional Information:
Funding Information:
M.D. and I.Z. contributed equally to this work. Silicon photonic waveguides were manufactured through the UK Cornerstone open access Silicon Photonics rapid prototyping foundry. The authors thank Dr. Nathan Youngblood for stimulating discussions. This work was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) (EP/L021129/1, EP/M015130/1, EP/M009122/1, and EP/G060363/1).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 The Authors. Published by WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
Keywords:
integrated photonics, metasurfaces, nanophotonics, optical switching, phase-change materials
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 442770
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/442770
ISSN: 1616-301X
PURE UUID: 8ad9681a-cefc-43c6-847d-1ee69b51514a
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Date deposited: 27 Jul 2020 16:30
Last modified: 20 Mar 2024 02:59
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Author:
Matthew Delaney
Author:
Daniel Lawson
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