Thermo-optic tuning of silicon nitride microring resonators with low loss non-volatile Sb₂S₃ phase change material

Abstract

A new family of phase change material based on antimony has recently been explored for applications in near-IR tunable photonics due to its wide bandgap, manifested as broadband transparency from visible to NIR wavelengths. Here, we characterize Sb₂S₃ optically and demonstrate the integration of this phase change material in a silicon nitride platform using a microring resonator that can be thermally tuned using the amorphous and crystalline states of the phase change material, achieving extinction ratios of up to 18 dB in the C-band. We extract the thermo-optic coefficient of the amorphous and crystalline states of the Sb₂S₃ to be 3.4 x 10⁻⁴K⁻¹ and 0.1 x 10⁻⁴K⁻¹, respectively. Additionally, we detail the first observation of bi-directional shifting for permanent trimming of a non-volatile switch using continuous wave (CW) laser exposure (−5.9 to 5.1 dBm) with modulation in effective refractive index ranging from +5.23 x 10⁻⁵ to −1.20 x 10⁻⁴. This work experimentally verifies optical phase modifications and permanent trimming of Sb₂S₃, enabling potential applications such as optically controlled memories and weights for neuromorphic architecture and high density switch matrix using a multi-layer PECVD based photonic integrated circuit.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Ioannis Zeimpekis: orcid.org/0000-0002-7455-1599

ORCID for Thalia Domínguez Bucio‬: orcid.org/0000-0002-3664-1403

ORCID for Daniel W, Hewak: orcid.org/0000-0002-2093-5773

ORCID for Harold Chong: orcid.org/0000-0002-7110-5761

ORCID for Frederic Gardes: orcid.org/0000-0003-1400-3272

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