Wavelength-selective 2 × 2 optical switch based on a Ge2Sb2Te5-assisted microring

A novel wavelength-selective 2 × 2 optical switch based on a Ge2Sb2Te5(GST)-assisted microring-resonator(MRR) is proposed. The present GST-assisted MRR consists of two access optical waveguides and an MRR coupled with a bent GST-loaded silicon photonic waveguide. The 2 × 2 optical switch is switched ON or OFF by modifying the GST state to be crystalline or amorphous. In particular, the microring waveguide and the bent GST-loaded waveguide are designed to satisfy the phase-matching condition when the GST is crystalline. As a result, the MRR becomes highly lossy and the resonance peak is depressed significantly.On the other hand, when it is off, there is little coupling due to the significant phase mismatching.Consequently, one has a low-loss transmission at the drop port for the resonance wavelength. In this paper,the simulation using the three-dimensional finite-difference method shows that the extinction ratio of the designed photonic switch is ～20 d B at the resonance wavelength, while the excess losses at the through port and drop port are 0.9 d B and 2 d B. In particular, the resonance wavelength changes little between the ON and OFF states, which makes it suitable for multichannel wavelength-division-multiplexing systems.