Broadband transparent optical phase change materials for high-performance nonvolatile photonics
Abstract
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.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Sep 30, 2019
- Source ID
- 10.1038/s41467-019-12196-4
Entities
People
- Anupama Yadav
- Bridget Bohlin
- Carlos Ríos
- Christopher Roberts
- Hongtao Lin
- Huashan Li
- Huikai Zhong
- Jamie Warner
- Jeffrey B. Chou
- Juejun Hu
- Junying Li
- Kathleen Richardson
- Mikhail Y Shalaginov
- Myungkoo Kang
- Paul Robinson
- Qingyang Du
- Si Zhou
- Tian Gu
- Vladimir Liberman
- Yifei Zhang
- Zhuoran Fang
Organizations
- United States Department of Defense