Non-Volatile Programmable Ultra-Small Photonic Arbitrary Power Splitters

A series of reconfigurable compact photonic arbitrary power splitters are proposed based on the hybrid structure of silicon and Ge₂Sb₂Se₄Te₁ (GSST), which is a new kind of non-volatile optical phase change material (O-PCM) with low absorption. Our pixelated meta-hybrid has an extremely small photonic integrated circuit (PIC) footprint with a size comparable to that of the most advanced electronic integrated circuits (EICs). The power-split ratio can be reconfigured in a completely digital manner through the amorphous and crystalline switching of the GSST material, which only coated less than one-fifth of the pattern allocation area. The target power-split ratio between the output channels can be arbitrarily reconfigured digitally with high precision and in the valuable C-band (1530-1560 nm) based on the analysis of three-dimensional finite-difference time-domain. The 1 × 2, 1 × 3, and 1 × 4 splitting configurations were all investigated with a variety of power-split ratios for each case, and the corresponding true value tables of GSST distribution are given. These non-volatile hybrid photonic splitters offer the advantages of an extremely small footprint and non-volatile digital programmability, which are favorable to the truly optoelectronic fusion chip.