Phase-Change Nanophotonic Circuits With Crossbar Electrodes and Integrated Microheaters

Phase-change photonics integrated circuits (PICs) have most recently attained considerable attention due to their broad bandwidth, superfast processing speed, and multiplexing function. However, their poor scalability adversely limited current PICs into single cell or simple architectures. To overcome this issue, for the first time we modelled the write and readout performances of Ge2Sb2Te5-based nanophotonic architecture with integrated indium-Tin-oxide (ITO) heater and crossbar platinum (Pt) electrodes. The updated architecture, when compared with other reported prototypes, exhibited better scalability and smaller energy consumptions. Its ability to achieve random access and multilevel functions at system level was also demonstrated by simulations, implying its bright prospect for in-memory computing and neuromorphic computing applications.