Phase-change materials (PCMs), capable of non-volatile electrically or optically induced transitions, are being actively explored as a promising option for use in silicon photonic neuromorphic integrated circuits and compact modulators in telecom networks to overcome the limitations in footprint and power consumption imposed by the utilization of weak and volatile thermo-optic effects in current architectures. We present the first-ever broadband measurement of the thermo-optic effect in a number of widely explored chalcogenide PCMs across visible to telecom frequencies. Our measurements show that beyond their non-volatile phase change properties, PCMs also possess giant switchable broadband thermo-optic coefficients.
Alloys of sulphur, selenium and tellurium, often referred to as chalcogenide semiconductors offer a highly versatile, compositionally-controllable material platform for reconfigurable metamaterial applications. They present various high- and low-index dielectric, low-epsilon and plasmonic properties across ultra-violet (UV), visible and infrared frequencies, in addition to an ultra-fast, non-volatile, electrically-/optically-induced switching capability between phase states with markedly different electromagnetic properties. We show that by integrating chalcogenide metasurfaces on the tip and side of optical fibers as well as silicon photonic waveguide platforms a range of wavelength-tunable modulators for telecommunication networks and synaptic weights for emerging neuromorphic computing applications can be realized.
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