Nonvolatile Optical Switch With a Programmable p-n Heterojunction

A nonvolatile optical switch is constructed by a hybrid configuration of a Mach–Zender interferometer (MZI) and a quasi-nonvolatile flash-memory cell. It can nonvolatile modify the transmission states without persistent supply due to the ability of persistently trapping charges in the flash-memory cell. Owing to the programmable p-n heterojunction (WSe<sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><roman>2</roman></sub>/MoS<sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><roman>2</roman></sub>) switching path, the writing/erasing speed can be down to nanoseconds. Results show the extinction ratio (ER) of 18 dB and the insertion loss (IL) of 1 dB with <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">L</i><sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">π</sub> = 65 μm. Meanwhile, the device shows an optical broadband response and low-power consumption in the ~<italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">f</i>J range. This performance suggests that quasi-nonvolatile optical switch has great potential in the next generation of high-speed and low-power consumption application.