New Platforms for Reconfigurable Nanophotonics Enabled by Nonvolatile Phase-Change Materials

Phase-change materials with very large change in their optical properties upon transition between amorphous and crystalline phases are promising candidates to miniaturize the fundamental reconfigurable nanophotonic and metaphotonic building blocks like phase shifters, delay lines, tunable nanoantennas, and reconfigurable spatial light modulators that are essential for a large range of applications including communication, quantum photonics, computing, imaging, and ranging.<br/><br/>This talk is focused on the unique features of nonvolatile phase-change materials for enabling new classes of reconfigurable nanophotonic and metaphotonic devices with subwavelength feature sizes through forming new hybrid material platforms by their integration with dielectric, plasmonic, and more conventional CMOS-compatible integrated nanophotonic materials (e.g., silicon and silicon nitride). The fundamental properties of such devices and their ability for dynamic wavefront engineering as a major functionality for enabling state-of-the-art applications like switching, structural color, and ranging will be discussed. Practical issues like speed, minimum feature size, power consumption, and agility of such hybrid reconfigurable platforms will be covered, and a list of potential areas of improvement to enable state-of-the-art applications will be presented.