Toward accurate thermal modeling of phase change material based photonic devices
arXiv:2305.14145 · doi:10.1002/smll.202304145
Abstract
Reconfigurable or programmable photonic devices are rapidly growing and have become an integral part of many optical systems. The ability to selectively modulate electromagnetic waves through electrical stimuli is crucial in the advancement of a variety of applications from data communication and computing devices to environmental science and space explorations. Chalcogenide-based phase change materials (PCMs) are one of the most promising material candidates for reconfigurable photonics due to their large optical contrast between their different solid-state structural phases. Although significant efforts have been devoted to accurate simulation of PCM-based devices, in this paper, we highlight three important aspects which have often evaded prior models yet having significant impacts on the thermal and phase transition behavior of these devices: the enthalpy of fusion, the heat capacity change upon glass transition, as well as the thermal conductivity of liquid-phase PCMs. We further investigated the important topic of switching energy scaling in PCM devices, which also helps explain why the three above-mentioned effects have long been overlooked in electronic PCM memories but only become important in photonics. Our findings offer insight to facilitate accurate modeling of PCM-based photonic devices and can inform the development of more efficient reconfigurable optics.
References in corpus (9)
- The James Webb Space Telescope
- Electrically Reconfigurable Nonvolatile Metasurface Using Low-Loss Optical Phase Change Material
- Efficient, Compact and Low Loss Thermo-Optic Phase Shifter in Silicon
- Electrically driven programmable phase-change meta-switch reaching 80% efficiency
- Monatomic phase change memory
- Active metasurfaces: lighting the path to commercial success
- Interface controlled thermal properties of ultra-thin chalcogenide-based phase change memory devices
- A scheme for simulating multi-level phase change photonics materials
- Time-resolved reversible optical switching of the ultralow-loss phase change material Sb2Se3