Electrically Assisted Lasing in Metal Halide Perovskite Semiconductors

Abstract

Metal halide perovskite (MHP) semiconductors offer the prospect of wavelength-tunable diode lasers fabricated on a wide range of substrates without lattice matching concerns. However, to date, all MHP lasers are optically pumped. Here, we show that electrically injected carriers can assist lasing in a MHP composition of formamidinium lead iodide and methylammonium lead bromide ((FAPbI 3 ) 0.95 (MAPbBr 3 ) 0.05 ) under short, high current electrical pulses at low temperature. Using a distributed feedback resonator, doped organic transport layers, and a custom impulse circuit that delivers electrical pulses as short as 3 ns, we are able to inject a carrier density of approximately 6 × 10 17 cm −3 at T = 230 K and show that it leads to a ∼24% reduction in the optically pumped lasing threshold when the optical pulse overlaps the first few nanoseconds of the electrical pulse. These results support the viability of MHP laser diodes and indicate that roughly an order of magnitude reduction in threshold carrier density will be required to achieve pure electrically pumped lasing in (FAPbI 3 ) 0.95 (MAPbBr 3 ) 0.05 at low temperature.