Non-Volatile Reconfigurable Silicon Photonics Based on Phase-Change Materials

The traditional ways of tuning a silicon photonic network are mainly based on the thermo-optic effect or free carrier dispersion. drawbacks these methods volatile nature and extremely small change in complex refractive index (Δn<0.001). In order to achieve low energy consumption smaller footprint for applications such as memories, optical computing, programmable gate array, neural network, it is essential that two states system exhibit high contrast remain non-volatile. Phase materials (PCMs) Ge 2 Sb Te xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">5 provide an excellent solution, thanks drastic between which can be switched reversibly non-volatile fashion. Here, we review recent progress field reconfigurable photonics PCMs. We start with general introduction material properties PCMs have been exploited integrated discuss their operating wavelengths. various switches built upon reviewed. Lastly, PCM-based circuits potential future directions this field.