A plasmonic random laser tunable through stretching silver nanowires embedded in a flexible substrate

Abstract

A mechanically-tunable random laser based on a waveguide-plasmonic scheme has been investigated. This laser can be constructed by spin coating a solution of polydimethylsiloxane doped with the rhodamine 6G organic dye and silver nanowires onto a silicone rubber slab. The excellent overlap of the plasmon resonance peak of the silver nanowires with both the pump wavelength and the photoluminescence spectrum provides the low threshold and tuning properties of the random laser. The random laser wavelength can be tuned from 558 to 565 nm by stretching the soft substrate, which causes reorientation and breakage of the silver nanowires. The polarization state of the random laser can also be changed from random polarization to partial polarization by stretching. The laser performance remains unchanged after the stretching and restoration experiments. These results not only enable easy realization of an ultrathin flexible plasmonic random laser but also provide insights into the mechanisms of three-dimensional plasmonic feedback random lasers.

Temporal profiles for measuring threshold of random lasers pumped by ns pulses

“…Random lasers (RLs) 1–5 based on both the dielectric scattering 6–10 and the surface plasmonic resonance of metallic nanoparticles 11–17 have attracted wide attentions for their interesting physical mechanism and potential value in applications such as light sources 18 , speckle-free imaging 19 , and information retrieval 20 . For RLs, the working threshold is one of the most important physical parameters for characterizing their performances.…”

“…For RLs, the working threshold is one of the most important physical parameters for characterizing their performances. Generally, the variation inflection point of the emission intensity and/or spectral linewidths with the pumping power density has been used to determine the threshold for random lasing 11–17 . The probability of random lasing in the case of random lasers 21 with sub-nanometric spikes on the emission curves, and the Lêvy exponents 22 are also used to define the threshold, respectively.…”

Ultra-thin plasmonic random lasers

“…The miniaturization and flexibility of plasmonic random lasers are essential for the continued development of laser technologies. In our previous work, a flexible plasmonic random laser has been proposed to achieve the tunability of laser output [15]. Note that all solid-state random lasers mentioned above are constructed on the substrates.…”

Broadband plasmonic silver nanoflowers for high-performance random lasing covering visible region

“…Various random lasers have been demonstrated based on dielectric nanoparticle scattering [7][8][9] and metal nanoparticle surface plasmonic scattering [10][11][12][13]. In particular, random lasing based on localized surface plasmon resonances (LSPR) have demonstrated the characteristics of low threshold and high performance [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19].…”