The Shanghai Institute of Microsystems and others have developed a low-power silicon optical switch with small size and high extinction ratio

Silicon photonics integration refers to the use of CMOS process platform to integrate devices that realize high-performance modulation, detection, transmission and multiplexing functions on the same chip.

At present, silicon photonics integrated switching devices mainly adopt the structure design of Mach-Zehnder interferometer or micro-ring resonator.

The device structure proposed by the research team consists of a single-mode silicon optical waveguide and three cascaded Ge ₂ Sb ₂ Te ₅ nanodisks (Figure a), with a total volume of only 0.

The related research results are titled Ultracompact High-Extinction-Ratio Nonvolatile On-Chip Switches Based on Structured Phase Change Materials and published online in Laser & Photonics Reviews

(a) Structural schematic diagram and SEM photo of subwavelength phase-change silicon optical switch; (b) Optical field intensity distribution when the device is in ON (top) and OFF (bottom) switching states, respectively; (c) Single crystals with different energies The influence of the chemical pulse on the transmission rate of the optical switch; (d) The test results of the transmission spectrum of each stage of the multi-level optical switch; (e) The test results of the reset operation of the optical switch