Phase-change materials (PCMs) have emerged as a promising platform to modulate light in a nonvolatile manner—a reversible switching between their stable amorphous and crystalline states leads to an impressive refractive index contrast (∆n, ∆k ~1−3). The last decade has seen a growing interest in such a combination of properties for a variety of nonvolatile programmable devices, such as metasurfaces, tunable filters, phase/amplitude modulators, color pixels, thermal camouflage, photonic memories/computing, plasmonics, etc.
Thus demonstrating outstanding versatility and integration in low-energy photonic applications. Integrated photonics, in particular, has benefited from the progress of PCMs such as Sb2Se3 and Ge2Sb2Te5 for ultra-compact phase and amplitude modulators, respectively, using all-optical and electro-thermal approaches. These low-energy devices allow small-form-factor quasi-passive silicon photonics, i.e. silicon photonics with zero-static power, yet with the ability to reconfigure actively—crucial properties in applications such as in-memory computing, optical synapses, zero-power photonic switches, trimming, optical storage, etc. In this talk, we will discuss the fundamental principles and switching mechanisms of PCMs in integrated photonic platforms and the state-of-the-art achievements, current efforts, and open challenges.
This invited speaker presentation will be give by Carlos A. Rios Ocampo, Assistant Professor at University of Maryland, College Park.
About Carlos A. Rios Ocampo
Carlos A. Ríos Ocampo is an Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he has led the Photonic Materials & Devices groups since 2021. Before joining UMD, Carlos was a Postdoctoral Associate at MIT, received a DPhil (PhD) degree in 2017 from the University of Oxford (UK), an MSc degree in Optics and Photonics in 2013 from the KIT (Germany), and a BSc in Physics in 2010 from the University of Antioquia (Colombia). Carlos’s scientific interests focus on studying and developing new on-chip technologies driven by the synergy between nanomaterials and photonics.
About University of Maryland, Photonic Materials & Devices Group
We study nanoscale light-matter interactions and apply nanomaterial properties in high-performance optoelectronic devices and systems.
For more information visit the website.
Carlos A. Rios Ocampo is invited speaker at the 2024 edition of the European Conference on Integrated Optics.