High-Endurance, Low-loss Sb2Se3 Optical Switches on Silicon Nitride using Transparent Conductive Heaters
Abstract
We report an electrically actuated, low-loss non-volatile optical switch based on the phase-change material (PCM) Sb2Se3 integrated on a silicon nitride (Si3N4) platform. The device is fabricated using an 8-inch wafer-scale process flow, demonstrating the feasibility of scalable manufacturing for photonic integrated circuits (PICs). By employing transparent indium tin oxide (ITO) micro-heaters, reversible switching between the amorphous and crystalline states is achieved with an extinction ratio of 25~dB and an endurance exceeding 140 million switching cycles, establishing a new benchmark for non-volatile integrated photonic memory and reconfigurable architectures. Furthermore, multi-level operation beyond 6 bits can be repeatably demonstrated by tailoring the electrical pulse widths, enabling precise control of the optical phase. These results highlight a scalable and energy-efficient platform for high-density programmable and non-volatile photonic integrated systems.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2604.11649,
title = {High-Endurance, Low-loss Sb2Se3 Optical Switches on Silicon Nitride using Transparent Conductive Heaters},
author = {Xingshi Yu and Ipsita Chakraborty and Isaac Johnson and Savvas I. Raptis and Qianbin Luo and Thalia Dominguez Bucio and Elliot Sandell and Chris Vagionas and Ioannis Zeimpekis and Amalia Miliou and Nikos Pleros and Frederic Gardes},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.11649},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
12 pages, 5 figures. Submitted to Nature Photonics. Demonstrates a scalable non-volatile phase-change photonic switch with wafer-scale fabrication, high endurance (>10^8 cycles), and multi-level (over 6 bit) programmability