ABSTRACT
Phase-change nanophotonic devices are promising candidates for devising reconfigurable integrated optical components. The integrated photonics platform provides scalability and reliability of the fabricated devices, whereas the outstanding properties of phase-change materials (PCMs) guarantee fast operation, energy efficiency, and reversibility. Dielectric waveguides are the main ingredients for nanophotonic circuits and are used to direct the flow of light in analogy to conductive paths for the current on electronic circuit boards. Phase-change photonics is the field of integrating PCMs with a nanophotonic platform. Reconfigurable metasurfaces based on PCMs offer the ability of configuring the surface properties of an object in a reversible and nonvolatile manner. Hybrid phase-change nanophotonic circuits are a promising concept for all-optical signal processing. Several designs for hardware implementations of optical phase-change synapses have already been demonstrated, showing a huge potential in neuromorphic computing. Hybrid phase-change photonic circuit is a versatile tool for various applications.
