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  • A New Family of Ultralow Lo...
    Delaney, Matthew; Zeimpekis, Ioannis; Lawson, Daniel; Hewak, Daniel W.; Muskens, Otto L.

    Advanced functional materials, 09/2020, Letnik: 30, Številka: 36
    Journal Article

    Phase‐change materials (PCMs) are seeing tremendous interest for their use in reconfigurable photonic devices; however, the most common PCMs exhibit a large absorption loss in one or both states. Here, Sb2S3 and Sb2Se3 are demonstrated as a class of low loss, reversible alternatives to the standard commercially available chalcogenide PCMs. A contrast of refractive index of Δn = 0.60 for Sb2S3 and Δn = 0.77 for Sb2Se3 is reported, while maintaining very low losses (k < 10−5) in the telecommunications C‐band at 1550 nm. With a stronger absorption in the visible spectrum, Sb2Se3 allows for reversible optical switching using conventional visible wavelength lasers. Here, a stable switching endurance of better than 4000 cycles is demonstrated. To deal with the essentially zero intrinsic absorption losses, a new figure of merit (FOM) is introduced taking into account the measured waveguide losses when integrating these materials onto a standard silicon photonics platform. The FOM of 29 rad phase shift per dB of loss for Sb2Se3 outperforms Ge2Sb2Te5 by two orders of magnitude and paves the way for on‐chip programmable phase control. These truly low‐loss switchable materials open up new directions in programmable integrated photonic circuits, switchable metasurfaces, and nanophotonic devices. New optical phase‐change materials are demonstrated, with the ability to realize on‐chip programmable phase control with very low optical losses. The chalcogenides Sb2S3 and Sb2Se3 exhibit a large refractive index contrast between their crystalline and amorphous phases. With reversible switching over thousands of cycles and easy integration with silicon, these materials pave the way for low‐loss reconfigurable and programmable nanophotonics.