Nanocavity tuning and formation controlled by the phase change of sub-micron-square GST patterns on Si photonic crystals

It has been well established that photonic crystal nanocavities with wavelength sized mode volume enable various integrable photonic devices with extremely small consumption energy and small footprint. In this study, we explore the possibility of non-volatile functionalities employing photonic crystal nanocavities and phase change material, Ge Sb Te (GST). Recently, non-volatile photonic devices based on GST have attracted significant interest and are expected to enable energy-efficient photonic processing, especially for optical computing. However, the device size and the area of GST in previous studies have been rather large. Here, we propose and fabricate Si photonic crystal nanocavities on which submicron-square GST patterns are selectively loaded. Because of the strong light confinement, extremely small area of GST is sufficient to manipulate the cavity mode. We have succeeded to fabricate 30-nm-thick and several-100nm-square GST blocks patterned at the center of photonic crystal cavity with a high alignment accuracy. We confirmed that the resonant wavelength and Q-factor of cavity modes are controlled by the phase change of GST. Moreover, cavity formation controlled by submicron-sized GST is also demonstrated by GST-loaded photonic-crystal line-defect waveguides. Our approach in which we place sub-micron-sized GST inside a photonic crystal nanocavity is promising for realizing extremely energy-efficient non-volatile integrable photonic devices, such as switches, modulators, memories, and reconfigurable novel devices.