Researchers from MISIS, MIET, MPGU, the Technological Center, HSE, and the Russian Quantum Center have identified the most promising semiconductor materials for photonic chips. The study focused on compounds based on germanium, antimony, and tellurium, which are capable of changing their structure between crystalline and amorphous states under laser pulses.
The team tested these materials by applying them to silicon nitride waveguides to evaluate signal change magnitude, switching speed, and cell size. The findings, published in the journal Materials Science in Semiconductor Processing, suggest these materials could enable the development of non-volatile photonic memory and optical neural networks.
Future work will focus on testing the durability and operational stability of these materials. The research is part of the Quantum Internet project under the Priority 2030 program and received support from the Russian Science Foundation and the Ministry of Science and Higher Education.
