Chipscale plasmonic modulators and switches based on metal-insulator-metal waveguides with Ge2Sb2Te5

TL;DR

This paper presents chip-scale plasmonic modulators and switches using metal-insulator-metal waveguides integrated with Ge2Sb2Te5, leveraging phase-change properties for reconfigurable, high-contrast, and fast optical modulation in telecommunication applications.

Contribution

Introducing Ge2Sb2Te5 into MIM waveguides to create reconfigurable, non-volatile plasmonic modulators and switches with high modulation depth and nanosecond response times.

Findings

Achieved 14 dB modulation depth.

Demonstrated nanosecond switching speed.

Designed structures are compact and easy to fabricate.

Abstract

We introduce phase-change material Ge2Sb2Te5 (GST) into metal-insulator-metal (MIM) waveguide systems to realize chipscale plasmonic modulators and switches in the telecommunication band. Benefitting from the high contrast of optical properties between amorphous and crystalline GST, the three proposed structures can act as reconfigurable and non-volatile modulators and switches with excellent modulation depth 14 dB and fast response time in nanosecond, meanwhile possessing small footprints, simple frameworks and easy fabrication. This work provides new solutions to design active devices in MIM waveguide systems, and can find potential applications in more compact all-optical circuits for information processing and storage.