Non‐Volatile Reconfigurable Integrated Photonics Enabled by Broadband Low‐Loss Phase Change Material

Abstract Phase change materials (PCMs) have long been used as a storage medium in rewritable compact disk and later in random access memory. In recent years, integration of PCMs with nanophotonic structures has introduced a new paradigm for non‐volatile reconfigurable optics. However, the high loss of the archetypal PCM Ge 2 Sb 2 Te 5 in both visible and telecommunication wavelengths has fundamentally limited its applications. Sb 2 S 3 has recently emerged as a wide‐bandgap PCM with transparency windows ranging from 610 nm to near‐IR. In this paper, the strong optical phase modulation and low optical loss of Sb 2 S 3 are experimentally demonstrated for the first time in integrated photonic platforms at both 750 and 1550 nm. As opposed to silicon, the thermo‐optic coefficient of Sb 2 S 3 is shown to be negative, making the Sb 2 S 3 –Si hybrid platform less sensitive to thermal fluctuation. Finally, a Sb 2 S 3 integrated non‐volatile microring switch is demonstrated which can be tuned electrically between a high and low transmission state with a contrast over 30 dB. This work experimentally verifies prominent phase modification and low loss of Sb 2 S 3 in wavelength ranges relevant for both solid‐state quantum emitter and telecommunication, enabling potential applications such as optical field programmable gate array, post‐fabrication trimming, and large‐scale integrated quantum photonic network.