Optical materials capable of advanced functionality in the infrared will enable optical designs that can offer lightweight or small footprint solutions in both planar and bulk optical systems. The University of Central Florida’s Glass Processing and Characterization Laboratory, together with our collaborators, have been evaluating compositional design and processing protocols for both bulk and film strategies employing multicomponent chalcogenide glasses (ChGs). These materials can be processed with broad compositional flexibility that allows tailoring of their transmission window, physical and optical properties, which allows them to be engineered for compatibility with other homogeneous amorphous or crystalline optical components. We review progress in forming ChG-based gradient refractive index (GRIN) materials from diverse processing methodologies, including solution-derived ChG layers, poled ChGs with gradient compositional and surface reactivity behavior, nanocomposite bulk ChGs and glass ceramics, and metalens structures realized through multiphoton lithography. We discussed current design and metrology tools that lend critical information to material design efforts to realize next-generation IR GRIN media for bulk or film applications.
We present recent development on integrated flexible and stretchable photonic devices. Conventional photonic devices are fabricated on rigid semiconductor or dielectric substrates and are therefore inherently incompatible with soft biological tissues. Recently, we have developed a suite of active and passive photonic devices and systems integrated on plastic substrates which can be bent, twisted, and stretched without compromising their optical performance. Key innovations are monolithic multi-material integration and advanced micro-mechanical structures co-designed with photonic devices, which enables devices with extreme mechanical flexibility and excellent optical performance.
The dramatic optical property change of optical phase change materials (O-PCMs) between their amorphous and crystalline states potentially allows the realization of reconfigurable photonic devices with enhanced optical functionalities and low power consumption, such as reconfigurable optical components, optical switches and routers, and photonic memories. Conventional O-PCMs exhibit considerable optical losses, limiting their optical performance as well as application space. In this talk, we present the development of a new group of O-PCMs and their implementations in novel meta-optic devices. Ge-Sb-Se-Te (GSST), obtained by partially substituting Te with Se in traditional GST alloys, feature unprecedented broadband optical transparency covering the telecommunication bands to the LWIR. A drastic refractive index change between the amorphous and crystalline states of GSST is realized and the transition is non-volatile and reversible.
Optical metasurfaces consist of optically-thin, subwavelength meta-atom arrays which allow arbitrary manipulation of the wavefront of light. Capitalizing on the dramatically-enhanced optical performance of GSST, transparent and ultra-thin reconfigurable meta-optics in mid-infrared are demonstrated. In one example, GSST-based all-dielectric nano-antennae are used as the fundamental building blocks for meta-optic components. Tunable and switchable metasurface devices are developed, taking advantage of the materials phase changing properties.
The dramatic optical property change of optical phase change materials (O-PCMs) between their amorphous and crystalline states potentially allows the realization of reconfigurable photonics devices with low power consumption, such as optical switches and routers, reconfigurable meta-optics, displays, and photonic memories. However, conventional O-PCMs, such as VO2 and Ge2Sb2Te5, are inherently plagued by their excessive optical losses even in dielectric states, limiting their optical performance and hence application space. In this talk, we present the development of a new group of O-PCMs and their implementations in novel photonic devices. Ge-Sb-Se-Te (GSST), obtained by partially substituting Te with Se in traditional GST alloys, feature unprecedented broadband optical transparency covering the telecommunication bands to LWIR. Capitalizing on the dramatically-enhanced optical performance, novel non-volatile, reconfigurable on-chip photonics devices and architectures are demonstrated. GSST-integrated Si photonics based on the material innovation and novel “non-perturbative” designs exhibit significantly improved switching performance over state-of-the-art GST-based approaches. The technology is further scalable to realize non-blocking matrix switches with arbitrary network complexity, paving the path towards high performance reconfigurable photonics chips.
We review the potential and limitations of a temperature-dependent Raman Scattering Technique (RST) as a nondestructive optical tool to investigate the thermal properties of bulk Chalcogenide Glasses (ChGs). Conventional thermal conductivity measurement techniques employed for bulk materials cannot be readily extended to thin films created from the parent bulk. This work summarizes the state of the art, and discusses the possibility to measure more accurately the thermal conductivity of bulk ChGs with micrometer resolution using RST. Using this information, we aim to extend the method to measure the thermal conductivity on thin films. While RST has been employed to evaluate the thermal conductivity data of 2D materials such as graphene, molybdenum disulfide, carbon nanotubes and silicon, it has not been used to effectively duplicate data on ChGs which have been measured by traditional measurement tools. The present work identifies and summarizes the limitations of using RST to measure the thermal conductivity on ChGs. In this technique, the temperature of a laser spot was monitored using Raman Scattering Spectra, and efforts were made to measure the thermal conductivity of bulk AMTIR 1 (Ge33As12Se55) and Ge32.5As10Se57.5 ChGs by analyzing heat diffusion equations. To validate the approach, another conventional technique - Transient Plane Source (TPS) has been used for assessing the thermal conductivity of these bulk glasses. Extension to other more complicated materials (glass ceramics) where signatures from both the glassy matrix and crystallites, are discussed.
Novel optical materials capable of advanced functionality in the infrared will enable optical designs that can offer lightweight or small footprint solutions in both planar and bulk optical systems. UCF’s Glass Processing and Characterization Laboratory (GPCL) with our collaborators have been evaluating compositional design and processing protocols for both bulk and film strategies employing multi-component chalcogenide glasses (ChGs). These materials can be processed with broad compositional flexibility that allows tailoring of their transmission window, physical and optical properties, which allows them to be engineered for compatibility with other homogeneous amorphous or crystalline optical components. This paper reviews progress in forming ChG-based GRIN materials from diverse processing methodologies, including solution-derived ChG layers, poled ChGs with gradient compositional and surface reactivity behavior, nanocomposite bulk ChGs and glass ceramics, and meta-lens structures realized through multiphoton lithography (MPL).
Optical phase change materials (O-PCMs) are a unique class of materials which exhibit extraordinarily large optical property change (e.g. refractive index change > 1) when undergoing a solid-state phase transition. These materials, exemplified by Mott insulators such as VO2 and chalcogenide compounds, have been exploited for a plethora of emerging applications including optical switching, photonic memories, reconfigurable metasurfaces, and non-volatile display. These traditional phase change materials, however, generally suffer from large optical losses even in their dielectric states, which fundamentally limits the performance of optical devices based on traditional O-PCMs. In this talk, we will discuss our progress in developing O-PCMs with unprecedented broadband low optical loss and their applications in novel photonic systems, such as high-contrast switches and routers towards a reconfigurable optical chip.
Two-dimensional (2-D) materials are of tremendous interest to silicon photonics given their singular optical characteristics spanning light emission, modulation, saturable absorption, and nonlinear optics. To harness their optical properties, these atomically thin materials are usually attached onto prefabricated devices via a transfer process. Here we present a new route for 2-D material integration with silicon photonics. Central to this approach is the use of chalcogenide glass, a multifunctional material which can be directly deposited and patterned on a wide variety of 2-D materials and can simultaneously function as the light guiding medium, a gate dielectric, and a passivation layer for 2-D materials. Besides achieving improved fabrication yield and throughput compared to the traditional transfer process, our technique also enables unconventional multilayer device geometries optimally designed for enhancing light-matter interactions in the 2-D layers. Capitalizing on this facile integration method, we demonstrate a series of high-performance glass-on-graphene devices including ultra-broadband on-chip polarizers, energy-efficient thermo-optic switches, as well as mid-infrared (mid-IR) waveguide-integrated photodetectors and modulators based on graphene and black phosphorus.
Infrared (IR) spectroscopy is widely recognized as a gold standard technique for chemical analysis. Traditional IR spectroscopy relies on fragile bench-top instruments located in dedicated laboratory settings, and is thus not suitable for emerging field-deployed applications such as in-line industrial process control, environmental monitoring, and point-ofcare diagnosis. Recent strides in photonic integration technologies provide a promising route towards enabling miniaturized, rugged platforms for IR spectroscopic analysis. Chalcogenide glasses, the amorphous compounds containing S, Se or Te, have stand out as a promising material for infrared photonic integration given their broadband infrared transparency and compatibility with silicon photonic integration. In this paper, we discuss our recent work exploring integrated chalcogenide glass based photonic devices for IR spectroscopic chemical analysis, including on-chip cavityenhanced chemical sensing and monolithic integration of mid-IR waveguides with photodetectors.
Infrared (IR) spectroscopy is widely recognized as a gold standard technique for chemical and biological analysis. Traditional IR spectroscopy relies on fragile bench-top instruments located in dedicated laboratory settings, and is thus not suitable for emerging field-deployed applications such as in-line industrial process control, environmental monitoring, and point-of-care diagnosis. Recent strides in photonic integration technologies provide a promising route towards enabling miniaturized, rugged platforms for IR spectroscopic analysis. It is therefore attempting to simply replace the bulky discrete optical elements used in conventional IR spectroscopy with their on-chip counterparts. This size down-scaling approach, however, cripples the system performance as both the sensitivity of spectroscopic sensors and spectral resolution of spectrometers scale with optical path length. In light of this challenge, we will discuss two novel photonic device designs uniquely capable of reaping performance benefits from microphotonic scaling. We leverage strong optical and thermal confinement in judiciously designed micro-cavities to circumvent the thermal diffusion and optical diffraction limits in conventional photothermal sensors and achieve a record 104 photothermal sensitivity enhancement. In the second example, an on-chip spectrometer design with the Fellgett’s advantage is analyzed. The design enables sub-nm spectral resolution on a millimeter-sized, fully packaged chip without moving parts.
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