At the META2022 Conference in Torremolinos, Spain, Phemtronics organized the Special Symposium SP7. "Challenges of Phase Change Materials and Plasmonics for Nanophotonics"

Organizers: Maria Losurdo, Yael Gutiérrez (CNR-NANOTEC, Italy), Kurt Hingerl, Christoph Cobet (Johannes Kepler Universität Linz, Austria), Mircea Modreanu (University College Cork, Ireland) & Fernando Moreno (Universidad de Cantabria, Spain)

At present, the transition from electronic to optical circuits is one of the technological challenges where material physicists and optical engineers focus their current research. The goal, to get faster and low consumption systems for applications ranging from health to digital communications. As an example, digital photonic logic circuits are key elements in the next generation of optical computers and memory devices, therefore, the development of efficient integrated switchers for building optical gates is basic. Phase Change Materials (PCM) have shown to be the key for developing this new technology. The peculiarity of these materials is that their optical properties can be controlled by an external stimulus, optical, electrical, thermal, etc. This attractive behavior, shown by a handful of chalcogenide alloys, exemplified by the Ge–Sb–Te (GST) family, has been exploited in a wide range of photonic devices including optical switches but recent research has shown that new alternative material compounds, also chalcogenide based, are able to open new possibilities for applications with more efficient photonic digital circuits. The objective of this special session intends to show the recent advances obtained with novel alternative PCM, its development and characterization in 2D and 3D configurations, and their attractive possibilities for building efficient optical devices for computation and communications. All this research is supported and framed by a recent project called PHEMTRONICS funded by the European Commission in its FET-OPEN-H2020 call.

Topics:

• Phase change materials;
  
• Plasmonics;
• Phase transitions in solids;
• Reconfigurable devices;
• Optical switches;
• Neuromorphic networks;
• Optical computing;
• Optical communications;
• Optical memories.

Invited Speakers:

• Ali Adibi, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
  
• Pablo Albella, University of cantabria, Spain
• Luca Bergamini, Universidad del Pais Vasco-CSIC, Spain
• Harish Bhaskaran, Oxford University, UK
• Laura Calió, Institute of Materials Science of Sevilla - CSIC, Spain
• Cornel Cobianu, NANOM MEMS SRL, Romania
• Leonardo de Souza Menezes, Nano-Institute Munich, Germany
• Nikolaos Farmakidis, Oxford University, UK
• Vincenzo Giannini, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas-CSIC, Spain
• Javier González-Colsa, University of cantabria, Spain
• Mario Graml, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria
• Sergio Gutierrez, Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain
• Jimmy John, Institut des Nanotechnologies de Lyon, France
• Dilson Juan, University of Cantabria, Spain
• Alexey V. Kravasin, King College London, UK
• Fernando Loren, Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain
• Otto Munskens, University of Southampton, UK
• Wolfram Pernice, University of Münster, Germany
• Josef Resl, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria
• Jose Sanchez Gil, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas-CSIC, Spain
• Gonzalo Santos, University of Cantabria, Spain
• Robert E. Simpson, Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore
• Thomas Taubner, RWTH Aachen University, Germany
• Johann Toudert, ENSEMBLE3 Centre of Excellence, Poland
• David Wright, University of Exeter, UK
• Matthias Wutting, RWTH Aachen University, Germany
• Nathan Youngblood, University of Pittsburgh, USA
• Ioannis Zeimpekis, University of Southampton, UK
• Nikolay Zheludev, University of Southampton, UK