Active metasurfaces leveraging phase change materials (PCMs) remain a subject of intense investigation, owing to their inherent tunable properties and successful integration into integrated photonics. By harnessing the ultra-compact form factor of optical metasurfaces, further advancements in switching speeds and reduction in switching energies have the potential to revolutionize applications in free space optical communication, optical signal processing, neuromorphic photonics, quantum photonics, and compact LiDAR. In this context, an ultrafast all-optically switchable narrowband spectral filter employing a distributed Bragg reflector cavity loaded with a PCM-metasurface is proposed. The work involves a comprehensive numerical exploration of its optical properties, encompassing design optimization and anticipating limits in switching speeds and energy requirements. Specifically, focusing on a GST225 metasurface operating in the shortwave-infrared spectrum, the numerical investigations reveal the potential to achieve transmission contrast levels as high as 24 dB, accompanied by Q-factors up to a thousand and less than 1 dB insertion loss. This performance notably outperforms recently reported free-standing PCM metasurfaces and cavities loaded with unstructured PCM thin films. Furthermore, the study predicts full-cycle reconfigurability (transitioning from amorphous to crystalline states and vice versa) with anticipated switching speeds of 91 & 200 MHz and switching fluence of 0.655 & 0.616 mJ/cm2 per cycle for the RESET and SET processes respectively. This investigation holds promise for advancing the state-of-the-art performance of PCM-based metasurfaces.

Active metasurfaces utilizing phase change materials (PCMs) are currently under investigation for applications in free-space optical communication, optical signal processing, neuromorphic photonics, quantum photonics, and compact LiDAR. Attention has now turned towards novel PCM like Sb2S3 which exhibit lower optical absorption and reasonable values of refractive-index contrast in comparison to traditional data-storage PCM. We propose and numerically study the class of all-dielectric metagratings capped with low-loss PCM and predict the possibility of continuously tunable resonances whose quality factors degrade gracefully during the amorphous-to-crystalline phase transition of the PCM. Specifically, we consider the CMOS-compatible silicon-nitride on silica substrate material platform for simple and asymmetric metagratings (in particular, the symmetric-broken dimerization) and Sb2S3 capping. Our numerical study predicts that notch-filters operating around the 1550 nm NIR wavelength window can be achieved with tuning range of over 76 nm with Q-factors ranging from 784 (amorphous-phase) to 510 (crystalline-phase) (a degradation in Q of about 35%) and insertion loss of about 0.9 dB. These performance figures are a significant improvement over previously published designs utilizing data-storage PCMs and other traditional notch-filter mechanisms. We examine the influence of grating dimerization and geometrical parameters on performance metrics of the notch-filter and predicts the possibility to trade-off rejection-band and in-band spectral transmission properties. Lastly, we perform a study of all-optical phase change mechanism. Our study is promising for the miniaturization of tunable notch-filter based optical systems.

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in active metasurfaces. In particular, phase change material-based metasurfaces offering all-optical reconfigurability are being explored. Despite recent progress, further improvement in device reconfiguration energies and optical contrast achievable between the amorphous and crystalline states is desirable. In this work, we demonstrate that using a mirror-backed chalcogenide-based narrowband perfect absorber metasurface can significantly improve the device's reflection contrast at much lower energies than its mirrorless case. By considering a GST225 metasurface operating in the near IR, our systematic numerical study finds improved reflection contrast (up to-32 dB, Q-factor 19.22 compared with 9.59 dB, Q-factor 11 for the mirrorless case). For the mirrored case, the thermal study finds faster crystallization (up to 6 times) at reduced reconfiguration thresholds (72 times lower) compared with the mirrorless case. This results in a more than 2 orders of magnitude higher device figure of merit [defined as the change in reflection contrast (in dB) to a corresponding change in optical energy (in nJ)] compared with the mirrorless case. The results are promising for high-performance metasurfaces at reduced switching energies.

The capabilities of modern precision nanofabrication and the wide choice of materials [plasmonic metals, high-index dielectrics, phase change materials (PCM), and 2D materials] make the inverse design of nanophotonic structures such as metasurfaces increasingly difficult. Deep learning is becoming increasingly relevant for nanophotonics inverse design. Although deep learning design methodologies are becoming increasingly sophisticated, the problem of the simultaneous inverse design of structure and material has not received much attention. In this contribution, we propose a deep learning-based inverse design methodology for simultaneous material choice and device geometry optimization. To demonstrate the utility of the proposed method, we consider the topical problem of active metasurface design using PCMs. We consider a set of four commonly used PCMs in both fully amorphous and crystalline material phases for the material choice and an arbitrarily specifiable polygonal meta-atom shape for the geometry part, which leads to a vast structure/material design space. We find that a suitably designed deep neural network can achieve good optical spectrum prediction capability in an ample design space. Furthermore, we show that this forward model has a sufficiently high predictive ability to be used in a surrogate-optimization setup resulting in the inverse design of active metasurfaces of switchable functionality.

There is now a deep interest in actively reconfigurable nanophotonics as they will enable the next generation of optical devices. Of the various alternatives being explored for reconfigurable nanophotonics, Chalcogenide phase change materials (PCMs) are considered highly promising owing to the nonvolatile nature of their phase change. Chalcogenide PCM nanophotonics can be broadly classified into integrated photonics (with guided wave light propagation) and Meta-optics (with free space light propagation). Despite some early comprehensive reviews, the pace of development in the last few years has shown the need for a topical review. Our comprehensive review covers recent progress on nanophotonic architectures, tuning mechanisms, and functionalities in tunable PCM Chalcogenides. In terms of integrated photonics, we identify novel PCM nanoantenna geometries, novel material utilization, the use of nanostructured waveguides, and sophisticated excitation pulsing schemes. On the meta-optics front, the breadth of functionalities has expanded, enabled by exploring design aspects for better performance. The review identifies immediate, and intermediate-term challenges and opportunities in (1) the development of novel chalcogenide PCM, (2) advance in tuning mechanism, and (3) formal inverse design methods, including machine learning augmented inverse design, and provides perspectives on these aspects. The topical review will interest researchers in further advancing this rapidly growing subfield of nanophotonics.

Heterogeneous integration of phase change materials (PCM) into photonic integrated circuits is of current interest for all-optical signal processing and photonic in-memory computing. The basic building block consists of waveguides or resonators embedded with state-switchable PCM cells evanescently coupled to the optical mode. Despite recent advances, further improvements are desired in performance metrics like switching speeds, switching energies, device footprint, and fan-out. We propose an architecture using resonant metamaterial waveguides loaded with Ge2Sb2Te5 (GST) nanoantenna, and present a numerical study of its performance. Our proposed design is predicted to have a write energy of 16 pJ, an erase energy of 190 pJ (which is three to four times lower than previous reports), and, an order of magnitude improvement in the write-process figure-of-merit. Additional advantages include lowered ON state insertion loss and GST volume reduction.

Tunability is a highly desirable feature for nanophotonic devices and metasurfaces that can enable a plethora of exciting applications like dynamic color filtering and displays, motionless beam scanning, and fast focal length tuning compact imagers. Among several alternatives being explored for realizing tunable nanophotonics, phase change materials have been receiving much attention. In particular, chalcogenide glasses like GeSeTe alloys possess several advantages like large refractive index contrast and rapid phase switching properties which enable non-volatile reconfigurable metasurfaces. While previous workers have reported high reflection contrast changes ensuing from laser-induced amorphous-to-crystalline phase changes, detailed studies of the reconfiguration dynamics and optimization of switching processes have not been adequately considered. In this work, we consider simple and dimerized one-dimensional gratings of GST225 and numerically study phase switching as a function of reconfiguration pulse intensity with the objective of minimizing reconfiguration threshold and maximizing the figure of merit (defined as the rate of change of reflection contrast in % to change in pulse intensity beyond the reconfiguration threshold). The numerical study employs coupled electromagnetic and thermal solvers to ascertain the temperature profile and material phase profile for a particular reconfiguration pulse (assumed to be rectangular shaped). This work hopes to provide insights into the reconfiguration dynamics of PCM gratings while scaling down the reconfiguration threshold intensity requirements which can guide experimental activity in PCM based active metasurfaces.