Melt-processed all-polymer distributed Bragg reflector laser

Abstract

We have assembled and studied melt-processed all-polymer lasers comprising distributed Bragg reflectors that were fabricated in large sheets using a co-extrusion process and define the cavities for dye-doped compression-molded polymer gain core sheets. Distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) resonators consisting of 128 alternating poly(styrene) (PS) and poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) layers were produced by multilayer co-extrusion. Gain media were fabricated by compression-molding thermoplastic host poly notmers doped with organic laser dyes. Both processing methods can be used in high-throughput roll-to-roll manufacturing. Optically pumped DBR lasers assembled from these components display single and multimode lasing in the reflection band of the resonators, with a slope efficiency of nearly 19% and lasing thresholds as low as 90microJ/cm(2). The lasing wavelength can be controlled via the layer thickness of the DBR resonator films, and variation of the laser dye. Studies of threshold and efficiency are in agreement with models for end-pumped lasers.

Luminescent Mechanochromic Sensors Based on Poly(vinylidene fluoride) and Excimer‐Forming p‐Phenylene Vinylene Dyes

“…Fueled by academic curiosity and the potential for use in applications that range from security features, [1] lightemitting diodes, [2] lasers, [3] to chemical sensors, [4] the development of luminogenic polymers [5] is attracting much interest in laboratories around the world. We recently developed a new family of stimuli-responsive luminogenic polymers, which change their emission color upon exposure to a range of stimuli.…”

Layered polymeric optical systems using continuous coextrusion

“…To build an all-polymer laser, reflective resonators were fabricated using 128 layers of PS/PMMA photonic crystal films [7,12]. The gain layer was a polymer doped laser dye and was sandwiched between two polymer resonators.…”

“…Processing two or more polymers with the same melt viscosity at a given temperature is pivotal for the successful fabrication of multilayered films. The multilayer coextrusion process itself has been introduced by the Dow Chemical Company 40 years ago [11] and has been greatly refined since [4,7,10,12]. It is commercially used, for example, by 3M to produce reflective films [13].…”

Thermo-spectral properties of plastic lasers

“…5 DBR lasers are made with a thick dye-doped polymer as the active gain medium between the cavity reflectors consisting of bilayers of refractive index mismatched polymers. [7][8][9][10] These are created by coextruding a multilayer polymer film and then binding these multilayer films onto each side of a single gain layer. Both laser types depend on similar geometric structures, where significant reflection occurs from alternating refractive index mismatched polymers that make a one-dimensional photonic crystal (PhC).…”