Non-reciprocal photonic devices, including optical isolators and circulators, are indispensible components in optical communication systems. However, the integration of such devices on semiconductor platforms has been challenging because of material incompatibilities between semiconductors and magneto-optical materials that necessitate wafer bonding, and because of the large footprint of isolator designs. Here, we report the first monolithically integrated magneto-optical isolator on silicon. Using a non-reciprocal optical resonator on an silicon-on-insulator substrate, we demonstrate unidirectional optical transmission with an isolation ratio up to 19.5 dB near the 1,550 nm telecommunication wavelength in a homogeneous external magnetic field. Our device has a small footprint that is 290 mm in length, significantly smaller than a conventional integrated optical isolator on a single crystal garnet substrate. This monolithically integrated non-reciprocal optical resonator may serve as a fundamental building block in a variety of ultracompact silicon photonic devices including optical isolators and circulators, enabling future low-cost, large-scale integration.Non-reciprocal photonic devices that break the time-reversal symmetry of light propagation provide critical functionalities such as optical isolation and circulation in photonic systems. Although widely used in optical communications, such devices are still lacking in semiconductor integrated photonic systems 1,2 because of challenges in both materials integration and device design. On the materials side, magneto-optical garnets used in discrete nonreciprocal photonic devices show large lattice and thermal mismatch with semiconductor substrates, making it difficult to achieve monolithic integration of garnets with phase purity, high Faraday rotation and low transmission loss 3,4 , and requiring wafer bonding to incorporate them on a semiconductor platform. On the device side, non-reciprocal mode conversion (NRMC) and non-reciprocal phase shift (NRPS) integrated optical isolators have large footprints with length scales from millimetres to centimetres 5,6 , which severely limits the feasibility of large-scale and low-cost integration. Efforts have been pursued both in the monolithic integration of iron garnet and the exploration of other magneto-optical materials with better semiconductor compatibility. Polycrystalline Y 3 Fe 5 O 12 (YIG) films 3 , epitaxial Sr(Fe-doped InP films 9 have been demonstrated to have promising magneto-optical performance at a wavelength of 1,550 nm. In relation to device design, several monolithic non-reciprocal photonic devices capitalizing on optical resonance effects (for example, magneto-optical photonic crystals 10 , garnet thin-film based optical resonators 11 , silicon ring resonators with magneto-optical polymer cladding 12 and modulated ring resonators using non-reciprocal photonic transitions 1 ) have been theoretically analysed with a view to reducing the device footprint. However, the experimental realization of monolit...

A novel strategy for preparing large‐area, oriented silicon nanowire (SiNW) arrays on silicon substrates at near room temperature by localized chemical etching is presented. The strategy is based on metal‐induced (either by Ag or Au) excessive local oxidation and dissolution of a silicon substrate in an aqueous fluoride solution. The density and size of the as‐prepared SiNWs depend on the distribution of the patterned metal particles on the silicon surface. High‐density metal particles facilitate the formation of silicon nanowires. Well‐separated, straight nanoholes are dug along the Si block when metal particles are well dispersed with a large space between them. The etching technique is weakly dependent on the orientation and doping type of the silicon wafer. Therefore, SiNWs with desired axial crystallographic orientations and doping characteristics are readily obtained. Detailed scanning electron microscopy observations reveal the formation process of the silicon nanowires, and a reasonable mechanism is proposed on the basis of the electrochemistry of silicon and the experimental results.

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.

Active metasurfaces promise reconfigurable optics with drastically improved compactness, ruggedness, manufacturability, and functionality compared to their traditional bulk counterparts. Optical phase change materials (O-PCMs) offer an appealing material solution for active metasurface devices with their large index contrast and nonvolatile switching characteristics. Here we report what we believe to be the first electrically reconfigurable nonvolatile metasurfaces based on O-PCMs. The O-PCM alloy used in the devices, Ge2Sb2Se4Te1 (GSST), uniquely combines giant non-volatile index modulation capability, broadband low optical loss, and a large reversible switching volume, enabling significantly enhanced light-matter interactions within the active O-PCM medium. Capitalizing on these favorable attributes, we demonstrated continuously tunable active metasurfaces with record half-octave spectral tuning range and large optical contrast of over 400%. We further prototyped a polarization-insensitive phase-gradient metasurface to realize dynamic optical beam steering.

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