High-Speed Non-Volatile Barium Titanate Field Programmable Photonic Gate Array

TL;DR

This paper introduces a non-volatile, high-speed programmable photonic gate array using ferroelectric switching on a silicon-barium titanate platform, enabling energy-efficient optical circuit reconfiguration without power retention.

Contribution

It demonstrates the first non-volatile programmable photonic array with ferroelectric domain switching, achieving nanosecond switching speeds and negligible static power consumption.

Findings

Achieved 80 ns switching speed.

Reduced static power to 560 nW per phase shift.

Successfully implemented diverse signal processing functions.

Abstract

Programmable integrated photonics aims to replicate the versatility of field-programmable gate arrays in the optical domain. However, scaling these systems has been prevented by the high power consumption and thermal crosstalk of conventional volatile phase shifters. Here, we demonstrate the first non-volatile field-programmable photonic gate array, implemented on a hybrid silicon-barium titanate platform. Unlike traditional thermo-optic devices that require constant power to maintain a state, our device utilizes ferroelectric domain switching to provide non-volatile memory, allowing optical circuits to be programmed and retained without any holding power or electrical bias. The hexagonal waveguide mesh integrates 58 programmable unit cells and 116 actuators, achieving nanosecond-scale switching speeds of 80 nanoseconds while reducing static power consumption to negligible levels (560 nanowatts per {\pi} phase shift). To validate this platform, we configured the mesh to perform diverse signal processing functions, including tunable filtering, 4x4 linear unitary transformations, and optical routing. This work establishes non-volatile ferroelectric silicon photonics as a scalable, heat-free platform essential for the next generation of energy-efficient photonic computing.