Abstract
Programmable photonic integrated circuits (PICs) are the foundation of on-chip optical technologies, with the optical modulators being one of the main building blocks of such programmable PICs. However, most of the available modulators suffer from high power consumption, low response time, and large footprint. Additionally, they show a large resistance modulation; thus, they require high switching voltage. In consequence, they operate much above CMOS-compatible voltages of 1.2 V and with high insertion losses. Furthermore, the state and information they carry are lost once the power is turned off—so, they are volatile. Thus, realizing modulators and phase shifters that overcome all those problems still remains a challenge. To overcome some of those limitations, the nonvolatile phase change materials implemented in the plasmonic structures are proposed that can offer many advantages as result of high electric field interaction with nonvolatile materials. Consequently, novel plasmonic nonvolatile switches proposed here can operate by phase modulation, absorption modulation, or both and under zero-static power. For the first time, the nonvolatile phase modulator is proposed that requires only 230 nm long active waveguide to attain full π phase delay with an insertion loss below even 0.12 dB. Simultaneously, under the requirements, it can operate as an amplitude modulator with an extinction ratio exceeding 2.2 dB/μm while the insertion losses are kept below 0.185 dB/μm. Furthermore, the heating mechanism can be based on the external heaters, internal heaters, electrical (memory) switching, or optical switching mechanism, which provide a lot of flexibility in terms of a design and requirements.
Highlights
Large-scale photonic integrated circuits (PICs) are based on the silicon photonics platform that is compatible with the well-established CMOS technology
As it was mentioned earlier, the optical switching in the proposed waveguide can be highly enhanced through the heat transfer from the metal stripe under the absorption of light to the phase change material (PCM) that is in a direct contact with the metal stripe
We have proposed a new class of electrically and optically driven plasmonic nonvolatile switches operating based on a phase shift and/or amplitude modulation that achieves zero-static power consumption in a device being extremely compact
Summary
In the last few years, photonic integrated circuits (PICs) became very attractive as they offer broad bandwidth and very efficient information transport, processing, and storage. Large-scale PICs are based on the silicon photonics platform that is compatible with the well-established CMOS technology. Apart from the photodetectors that perform optical to electrical signal conversion, the onchip modulators and switches convert the electrical signals into the optical ones, and they are key components in photonic links They should be characterized by low static and dynamic power consumption, high switching contrast, low optical loss, compact footprint, dense integration, and ultrafast switching speed. They should operate under CMOS driving voltages of 1.2 V. In terms of the modulators and switches that are based on free carrier dispersion effect, they show low power consumption and faster modulation speed; they suffer from a large device footprint as a result of small refractive index change (
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