Silicon photonic integrated circuits with electrically programmable non volatile memory functions.
Conventional silicon photonic integrated circuits do not normally possess memory functions, which require on chip power in order to maintain circuit states in tuned or field configured switching routes. In this context, we present an electrically programmable add/drop microring resonator with a wavelength shift of 426 pm between the ON/OFF states. Electrical pulses are used to control the choice of the state. Our experimental results show a wavelength shift of 2.8 pm/ms and a light intensity variation of ~0.12 dB/ms for a fixed wavelength in the OFF state. Theoretically, our device can accommodate up to 65 states of multi level memory functions. Such memory functions can be integrated into wavelength division mutiplexing (WDM) filters and applied to optical routers and computing architectures fulfilling large data downloading demands.
Optics express