Electrically Reconfigurable Phase-Change Transmissive Metasurface.

Programmable and reconfigurable optics hold significant potential for transforming a broad spectrum of applications, spanning space explorations to biomedical imaging, gas sensing, and optical cloaking. The ability to adjust the optical properties of components like filters, lenses, and beam steering devices could result in dramatic reductions in size, weight, and power consumption in future optoelectronic devices. Among the potential candidates for reconfigurable optics, chalcogenide-based phase change materials (PCMs) offer great promise due to their non-volatile and analogue switching characteristics.

Freeform direct-write and rewritable photonic integrated circuits in phase-change thin films.

Photonic integrated circuits (PICs) with rapid prototyping and reprogramming capabilities promise revolutionary impacts on a plethora of photonic technologies. We report direct-write and rewritable photonic circuits on a low-loss phase-change material (PCM) thin film. Complete end-to-end PICs are directly laser-written in one step without additional fabrication processes, and any part of the circuit can be erased and rewritten, facilitating rapid design modification.

Inference of process variations in silicon photonics from characterization measurements.

Understanding process variations and their impact in silicon photonics remains challenging. To achieve high-yield manufacturing, a key step is to extract the magnitude and spatial distribution of process variations in the actual fabrication, which is usually based on measurements of replicated test structures. In this paper, we develop a Bayesian-based method to infer the distribution of systematic geometric variations in silicon photonics, without requiring replication of identical test structures.