Programmable Integrated Photonics with Phase-Change Materials

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.

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Does the world need general-purpose programmable photonics?

A presentation by invited speaker Wim Bogaerts, Professor in Silicon Photonics, Ghent University-IMEC / Founder, Luceda Photonics. HE graduated in engineering (applied physics) at Ghent University in June 1998. He joined the Photonics Research Group of Ghent University-IMEC for a PhD, building the design and technology foundations for IMEC’s first silicon photonics technology platform on 200mm CMOS tools. This led to collaborations with tens of partners, growing into a silicon photonics multi-project-wafer service in IMEC, eventually known as ePIXfab. To enable the design of these photonic chips, the PI and his group developed the software package IPKISS, a parametric design framework for photonic circuits.

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