A New Family of Ultralow Loss Reversible Phase‐Change Materials for Photonic Integrated Circuits: Sb₂S₃ and Sb₂Se₃

TLDR

Phase‑change materials are highly sought for reconfigurable photonic devices, yet most exhibit significant absorption loss in one or both states. The authors introduce a figure of merit that incorporates measured waveguide losses to address the near‑zero intrinsic absorption of Sb₂S₃ and Sb₂Se₃ on silicon photonics platforms. They integrate these materials into silicon waveguides, employ visible‑laser switching for Sb₂Se₃, and use the new figure of merit to evaluate performance. Sb₂S₃ and Sb₂Se₃ achieve Δn of 0.60 and 0.77, respectively, with k < 10⁻⁵ at 1550 nm, >4000‑cycle endurance, and a FOM of 29 rad dB⁻¹—outperforming GST by two orders of magnitude and enabling low‑loss programmable photonic circuits.

Abstract

Abstract 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, Sb 2 S 3 and Sb 2 Se 3 are demonstrated as a class of low loss, reversible alternatives to the standard commercially available chalcogenide PCMs. A contrast of refractive index of Δ n = 0.60 for Sb 2 S 3 and Δ n = 0.77 for Sb 2 Se 3 is reported, while maintaining very low losses ( k &lt; 10 −5 ) in the telecommunications C‐band at 1550 nm. With a stronger absorption in the visible spectrum, Sb 2 Se 3 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 Sb 2 Se 3 outperforms Ge 2 Sb 2 Te 5 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.