Fast Cycling Speed with Multimillion Cycling Endurance of Ultra‐Low Loss Phase Change Material (Sb₂Se₃) by Engineered Laser Pulse Irradiation

Abstract Programmable and reconfigurable photonics is revolutionized the next generation of Si/SiN‐based photonics processors, optical signal processing, and neural and quantum networks. Ultra‐low loss phase‐change technology has the enormous potential to offer energy‐efficient, extra large‐scale integrated (ELSI) nonvolatile programmable photonics that can overcome the limitations of commonly used volatile and energy‐hungry programmable photonic systems. So far, most of the phase change materials (PCM) devices have already shown to be suitable for programmable and reconfigurable photonic circuit applications that do not require extreme endurance or ultra‐fast switching speeds. However, applications with ultra‐fast speed and multi‐million cycling requirements, such as memory cells, quantum computing, optical displays, and optical modulators necessitate enormous improvements in the existing cycling speed and endurance of PCMs, for high‐performance device configuration. Here, optical switching of an ultra‐low loss PCM (Sb₂Se₃) is demonstrated with an unprecedented combination of rapid cycling speed (0.6 × 10⁵ cycles s⁻¹) and extreme endurance (> 2 × 10⁶ cycles) that pave the way for ultrafast, large‐scale, programmable, and reconfigurable integrated photonic circuits and devices.