Toward Nonvolatile Switching in Silicon Photonic Devices

Abstract

Nonvolatile switching is still a missing functionality in current mainstream silicon photonics complementary metal‐oxide‐semiconductor platforms. Fundamentally, nonvolatile switching stands for the ability to switch between two or more photonic states reversibly without needing additional energy to hold each state. Therefore, such a feature may push one step further the potential of silicon photonics by offering new ways of achieving photonic reconfigurability with ultrasmall energy consumption. Here, a detailed review of current developments that enable nonvolatile switching in silicon photonic waveguide devices is provided. Nonvolatility is successfully demonstrated either based on device engineering or by hybrid integration of silicon waveguides with materials exhibiting unique optical properties. Furthermore, several approaches with high potential for evolving toward a nonvolatile behavior with enhanced performance are also being explored. In most cases, many development steps are still necessary to ensure reliable devices. However, this research field is expected to progress in the coming years boosted by current and emerging applications benefiting from such functionality, such as new paradigms for photonic computing or advanced reconfigurable circuits for programmable photonic systems.

Ultra-compact nonvolatile plasmonic phase change modulators and switches with dual electrical–optical functionality

“…In consequence, it enables a low power consumption as no power is required to keep a switching state and brings new possibilities to the existing platform. 4 A huge impact is expected to technologies, such as programmable photonics, 5 photonic memories, 6 neural networks, 7 LIDAR systems, 8 or power-efficient switching in data centers. 9 In terms of a switching mechanism, the modulators can operate based on the plasma dispersion effect, 1,10 thermo-optic (TO) effect, [11][12][13][14] or electro-optic (EO) effect 15,16 where the modulation is achieved by either changing the real part (n) of the modal refractive index leading to optical modulators (OM) 16,17 or by modulating the imaginary part (k) of the modal refractive index leading to absorption modulators (AM).…”

Impact of GST thickness on GST-loaded silicon waveguides for optimal optical switching

“…Thereby, enabling new applications based on non-von Neumann architectures such as arithmetic 49 and logic 50 operations, in-memory computing 51 , neuromorphic computing 52 , 53 , or photonic tensor cores 54 . Moreover, the non-volatile characteristic of GST would be desirable for achieving silicon photonic devices with ultra-low power consumption 55 .…”

The Spectral Response of the Dual Microdisk Resonator Based on BaTiO3 Resistive Random Access Memory

“…On the other hand, the valence change mechanism would have the upper hand on materials that are filled with oxygen-related defects or vacancies, which are instrumental for the formation of the conductive nanofilaments through ions migration. Consequently, oxygen ions migration also plays a conspicuous role in electro-optical memory switching as well [ 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 ]. Lastly, the thermochemical reactions and Joule heating may also impact the creation and destruction of the nanofilaments, which are primarily found in unipolar resistance switching (URS), or nonpolar resistance switching, although a substantial number of the resistive memristors that have been documented up to date are functionally bipolar [ 33 , 34 , 35 ].…”