Enhanced laser action of Perylene-Red doped polymeric materials

Abstract

The laser action of Perylene-Red doped in linear, crosslinked, fluorinated and sililated polymeric materials is reported. The purity of dye was found to be a key factor to enhance its solid-state laser behaviour. The samples were transversely pumped at 532 nm, with 5.5 mJ/pulse and 10 Hz repetition rate. Perylene-Red doped copolymers of methyl methacrylate with a 10 vol% proportion of 2,2,2-trifluoroethyl-methacrylate exhibited a lasing efficiency of 26% with a high photostability since the dye laser output remained at the same level after 100,000 pump pulses in the same position of the sample. This lasing behaviour is, to the best of our knowledge, the highest achieved to date for organic, inorganic, and hybrid materials doped with Perylene-Red.

Improved performance of perylenediimide-based lasers

“…As already mentioned, these experiments were done at the same pump intensity, while the thresholds for the PDI-O-doped films 20 are lower than those of films containing PDI-C6. This means that from a practical point of view, the performance of PDI-O in terms of operational device lifetime would be even better than that shown by these data, particularly when operating at moderate pumping conditions (for example two times above the 25 corresponding threshold in both cases). typically provide information about the properties of the independent molecules.…”

“…[1][2][3][4] Organic 20 materials offer various advantages, such as easy processability in the form of thin films, chemical versatility, wavelength tuneability and low cost. The interest in OSLs increased with the discovery of stimulated emission in optically-pumped semiconducting polymer films, 5,6 since they opened the 25 possibility of using electrical excitation. The goal of obtaining laser diodes was initially the main motivation to decrease the pump intensity needed, i.e.…”

“…The ASE properties of PS films doped with 0.5 wt.% of PDI-C6 are similar to those of films containing PDI-N. 17 DFB lasers based on PDI-C6 have shown a very good laser performance: emission wavelength 10 between 554 to 583 nm (depending on film thickness and grating depth), thresholds of 1 J/pulse, single-mode emission with linewidths below 0.2 nm and photostability half-lives of  10 5 pump pulses under excitation in ambient conditions. 15 The laser properties of PDI-doped solid matrixes have also been investigated by other authors, [18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27] motivated mainly by the high thermal and photostability of PDIs. In most studies, the commercially available derivatives known as perylene orange (N,N'-di(2,6-diisopropylphenyl)-3,4:9,10-tetracarboxylic 20 diimide, PDI-O, see Fig.…”

“…Recently, the role of the matrix in optimizing the ASE properties of PDI-O has been investigated. 27 In that work, poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) was 25 highlighted as one of the best matrixes, from the point of view of photostability, to disperse PDI-O. It was concluded that the main photodegration mechanism of polymers doped with PDI-O was the chemical photodegradation due to oxygen (photooxidation).…”

“…the photostability halflife ( 1/2 ), defined as the time (or number of 25 pump pulses) at which the ASE intensity decays to half of its initial value.…”