A Survey on Optical Phase-Change Memory: The Promise and Challenges
A Survey on Optical Phase-Change Memory: The Promise and Challenges
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DOI：
10.1109/access.2023.3241146
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发表时间：
2023
期刊：
影响因子：
3.9
通讯作者：
Amin Shafiee;S. Pasricha;M. Nikdast
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Amin Shafiee;S. Pasricha;M. Nikdast
硅光子（SiPh）技术促进了集成光子在不同应用领域的部署，从数据通信应用中的超快速通信到新兴机器学习硬件加速器中的节能光学计算。最近，SiPh和相变材料的集成为实现可适应、可重构和可编程的光子平台创造了独特的机会。特别是，相变材料的非易失性可编程性使它们成为实现光子存储单元和架构的有希望的候选材料。因此，光子存储器系统和甚至存储器内光子计算范例正在兴起，特别是考虑到它们在电子和光子处理器中改进数据访问的潜力。然而，在相变光子集成电路的设计和制造中仍然存在许多挑战，需要解决。本文综述了相变材料与现代光子器件集成的最新进展和挑战，重点介绍了光子存储器的应用。特别是，我们探索相变光子存储器从材料水平的架构水平，提出了一个概述不同的材料水平的相变材料的特性与他们的光学，电学和热性能，以及他们的集成到SiPh设备和光子存储器架构和他们的应用程序在内存中的光子计算。我们还提出了与电子存储器的比较，并讨论了开放的研究挑战，必须解决进一步推进相变光子存储器成功集成到新兴的计算系统。
Silicon photonics (SiPh) technology has facilitated the deployment of integrated photonics across different application domains, from ultra-fast communication in Datacom applications to energy-efficient optical computation in emerging hardware accelerators for machine learning. More recently, the integration of SiPh and phase change materials has created a unique opportunity to realize adaptable, reconfigurable, and programmable photonic platforms. In particular, the nonvolatile programmability in phase change materials has made them a promising candidate for implementing photonic memory cells and architectures. Accordingly, photonic memory systems and even in-memory photonic computing paradigms are on the rise, especially given their potential for improving data access in electronic and photonic processors. However, there are still many challenges in the design and fabrication of phase-change photonic integrated circuits, which need to be addressed. This article presents a comprehensive survey on the recent advances and challenges for the integration of phase change materials with contemporary photonic devices while focusing on the photonic memory application. In particular, we explore phase-change photonic memory from the material level to the architecture level by presenting an overview of different material-level characteristics of phase change materials with their optical, electrical, and thermal properties as well as their integration into SiPh devices and photonic memory architectures and their application for in-memory photonic computing. We also present a comparison with electronic memory and discuss open research challenges that must be addressed to further advance phase-change photonic memory towards successful integration into emerging computing systems.