Broadband nonvolatile electrically programmable silicon photonic switches

Abstract

Programmable photonic integrated circuits (PICs) have recently gained significant interest due to their potential in creating next-generation technologies ranging from artificial neural networks and microwave photonics to quantum information processing. The fundamental building block of such programmable PICs is a tunable 2 x 2 switch, traditionally controlled by the thermo-optic or free-carrier dispersion. Yet, these implementations are power-hungry, volatile, and have a large footprint (typically > 100 um). Therefore, a truly 'set-and-forget' type 2 x 2 switch with zero static power consumption is highly desirable for large-scale PICs. Here, we report a broadband nonvolatile electrically programmable 2 x 2 silicon photonic switch based on the phase-change material Ge2Sb2Te5. The directional coupler switch exhibits a compact coupling length (64 um), small insertion loss (<2 dB), and minimal crosstalk (<-8 dB) across the entire telecommunication C-band while maintaining a record-high endurance of over 2,800 switching cycles. This demonstrated switch constitutes a critical component for realizing future generic programmable silicon photonic systems.

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Cited by in corpus (5)

• In-memory photonic dot-product engine with electrically programmable weight banks
• Non-volatile electrically programmable integrated photonics with a 5-bit operation
• Rewritable Photonic Integrated Circuits Using Dielectric-assisted Phase-change Material Waveguides
• Non-volatile hybrid optical phase shifter driven by a ferroelectric transistor
• Design of an ultra-compact, energy-efficient non-volatile photonic switch based on phase change materials