Phase change materials, and other functional nanomaterials typically require energy to be applied to them in order to have tunable properties. Typically, they can be tuned either optically, or electrically. However, a fundamental issue is that the interaction size scales of optics and that of electronics are very different - electronics function efficiently (energy/speed-wise) when dimensions are smaller than the wavelengths of light; unfortunately these are smaller than the typical interaction length-scales for optics. This has meant that efficient electro-optical coupling between electronic and photonic switching has been challenging. In this talk, I will talk about recent work within our group of collaborators to integrate concepts from plasmonics to bridge this length-scale disparity in integrated photonics, and present our recent work in this area. Although applied to phase change materials, these concepts are broadly applicable to other functional materials.
|