Scientific Achievement
Foundry users and staff have produced stable and continuous lasing at room temperature from plasmons smaller than the wavelength of light by combining upconverting nanoparticles developed by the Foundry with user-fabricated nanopillar arrays.
Significance and Impact
These nanolasers exhibit the lowest ever lasing threshold compared to other plasmon or upconverting nanolasers, and offer stable, continuous-wave operation at room temperature. These robust, low-power lasers will be widely applicable within a range of fields including medicine, nanophotonics, and quantum information science.
Research Details
- The research team engineered an all-solid-state system that leverages ultra-bright upconverting nanoparticles and microlaser expertise recently developed at the Foundry along with high-quality-factor arrays of Ag nanoparticles fabricated by the users.
- The coherent coupling between Ag nanoparticles selectively enhances the emission of the Yb3+/Er3+ -doped UCNPs, enabling the ultra-low lasing thresholds.
- The plasmonic nanolasers exhibited highly directional lasing at an extremely low threshold of 29 W/cm2 and were stable for longer than 6 hours.
A. Fernandez-Bravo, D. Wang, E.S. Barnard, A. Teitelboim, C. Tajon, J. Guan, G.C. Schatz, B.E. Cohen, E.M. Chan, P.J. Schuck, T.W. Odom. Nat. Mat. 2019. 18, 1172-1176. DOI: 10.1038/s41563-019-0482-5
See this work highlighted on the Department of Energy website!
