University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Non-volatile, reconfigurable zero-static power optical routing for transistor-laser-based electronic-protonic processing

Peng, Kaidong

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/100026

Description

Title
Non-volatile, reconfigurable zero-static power optical routing for transistor-laser-based electronic-protonic processing
Author(s)
Peng, Kaidong
Contributor(s)
Goddard, Lynford L.
Issue Date
2018-05
Keyword(s)
  • integrated photonics
  • optical switching
  • optical interconnect
  • nonvolatile
  • energy-efficient
  • phase change material
Abstract
A growing demand for smart devices, wireless communication infrastructure, network hardware, and even the internet of things (IoT) is stimulating global demands on computation performance, network bandwidth, and power consumption. Chip-scale electronic-photonic processing platforms are recently becoming increasingly popular because optical links offer greater bandwidth and much better energy efficiency than electrical interconnects. The emerging transistor-laser-based platform stands out for its high electrical-to-optical efficiency. Because transistor lasers operate best at 980 nm, efficient optical interconnects at this wavelength need to be developed for energy-efficient computing platforms. Zero-static power, reconfigurable, optical-to-optical routing topologies are desired to significantly reduce power consumption. Moreover, any power saved from these routing elements will allow for a greater power budget for function-specific processors to be integrated into the system, thus improving computation performance even further. Phase change materials (PCMs) such as GeTe and Ge2Sb2Te5 are good candidates for zero-static power switching. A PCM has bi-stable states under room temperature. Its permittivity is significantly different between its crystalline and amorphous phases at 980 nm. In this work, we propose to develop a reconfigurable 1 x 2 optical switch by utilizing the low loss GeTe PCM to pave the way for the transistor-laser platform. Deposited as a thin-film patch on an optical ring resonator, GeTe achieves a phase shift between its two states without introducing significant loss in the device. The non-volatility of our proposed device will open up opportunities for other interesting applications such as non-volatile optical memory and the optical equivalence of the Field Programmable Gating Array (FPGA) technology.
Type of Resource
text
Language
en
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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/100026

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