Open AccessNonvolatile multi-level adjustable optical switch based on the phase change material
Author(s) -
Zhiqiang Quan,
Yuanjian Wan,
Xiaoxiao Ma,
Jian Wang
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
optics express
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.394
H-Index - 271
ISSN - 1094-4087
DOI - 10.1364/oe.464326
Subject(s) - optical switch , optical transistor , optical computing , optical burst switching , photonics , transmittance , optical cross connect , computer science , optical performance monitoring , computation , optics , optoelectronics , materials science , optical fiber , telecommunications , wavelength division multiplexing , transistor , physics , voltage , wavelength , algorithm , quantum mechanics
For the advantages of the faster computation speed and lower energy consumption, all-optical computation has attracted great attention compared with the traditional electric computation method. Optical switches are the critical elementary units of optical computation devices. However, the traditional optical switches have two shortcomings, expending the outside energy to keep the switch state and the weak multi-level adjustable ability, which greatly restrict the realization of the large-scale photonic integrated circuits and optical spiking neural networks. In this paper, we use a subwavelength grating slot-ridge (SWGSR) waveguides on the silicon platform to design a nonvolatile multi-level adjustable optical switch based on the phase change material Ge 2 Sb 2 Te 5 (GST). Changing the phase state of GST can modulate the transmission of the optical switch, and the change of the optical transmittance of the optical switch is about 70%, which is much higher than that of previous optical switches. As no static power is required to maintain the phase state, it can find promising applications in optical switch matrices and reconfigurable optical spiking neural networks.