Broadband transparent optical phase change materials for high-performance nonvolatile photonics

Yifei Zhang,Christopher Roberts,Si Zhou,Myungkoo Kang,Paul D Robinson ,Bridget Bohlin,Qingyang Du,Carlos Rı́os ,Mikhail Y Shalaginov,Junying Li,Jamie H Warner ,Huikai Zhong,Vladimir Liberman,Huashan Li,Hongtao Lin,Tian Gu,Zhuoran Fang,Jeffrey B Chou,Anupama Yadav,Juejun Hu

doi:10.1038/s41467-019-12196-4

Yifei Zhang, Christopher Roberts + Show 18 more

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Optical phase change materials (O-PCMs), a unique group of materials featuring exceptional optical property contrast upon a solid-state phase transition, have found widespread adoption in photonic applications such as switches, routers and reconfigurable meta-optics. Current O-PCMs, such as Ge–Sb–Te (GST), exhibit large contrast of both refractive index (Δn) and optical loss (Δk), simultaneously. The coupling of both optical properties fundamentally limits the performance of many applications. Here we introduce a new class of O-PCMs based on Ge–Sb–Se–Te (GSST) which breaks this traditional coupling. The optimized alloy, Ge2Sb2Se4Te1, combines broadband transparency (1–18.5 μm), large optical contrast (Δn = 2.0), and significantly improved glass forming ability, enabling an entirely new range of infrared and thermal photonic devices. We further demonstrate nonvolatile integrated optical switches with record low loss and large contrast ratio and an electrically-addressed spatial light modulator pixel, thereby validating its promise as a material for scalable nonvolatile photonics.

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Optical phase change materials (O-PCMs), a unique group of materials featuring exceptional optical property contrast upon a solid-state phase transition, have found widespread adoption in photonic applications such as switches, routers and reconfigurable meta-optics
When optical phase change materials (O-PCMs) undergo solid-state phase transition, their optical properties are significantly altered. This singular behavior, identified in a handful of chalcogenide alloys exemplified by the Ge–Sb–Te (GST) family[1], has been exploited in a wide range of photonic devices including optical switches[2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9], nonvolatile display[10], reconfigurable meta-optics[11,12,13,14,15,16,17], tunable emitters and absorbers[18,19,20], photonic memories[21,22,23,24], and all-optical computers[25]
We report experimental demonstration of the vast capabilities enabled by an O-PCM Ge–Sb–Se–Te (GSST)

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Optical phase change materials (O-PCMs), a unique group of materials featuring exceptional optical property contrast upon a solid-state phase transition, have found widespread adoption in photonic applications such as switches, routers and reconfigurable meta-optics. When optical phase change materials (O-PCMs) undergo solid-state phase transition, their optical properties are significantly altered This singular behavior, identified in a handful of chalcogenide alloys exemplified by the Ge–Sb–Te (GST) family[1], has been exploited in a wide range of photonic devices including optical switches[2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9], nonvolatile display[10], reconfigurable meta-optics[11,12,13,14,15,16,17], tunable emitters and absorbers[18,19,20], photonic memories[21,22,23,24], and all-optical computers[25]. Record low losses in nonvolatile photonic circuits and electrical pixelated switching are demonstrated capitalizing on the extraordinary optical properties of this new O-PCM

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