Metasurface-integrated vertical cavity surface-emitting lasers for programmable directional lasing emissions

Abstract

Featuring low threshold current, circular beam profile, and scalable fabrication, vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs) have made indispensable contributions to the development of modern optoelectronic technologies. Manipulation of electromagnetic fields with emerging flat optical structures, namely metasurfaces, offers new opportunities to minimize complex optical systems into ultra-compact dimensions. Here, we proposed and experimentally demonstrated Vertical Cavity Metasurface-Emitting Lasers (VCMELs) through the monolithic integration of high-index metasurfaces, characterized by their remarkable spatial controllability over the laser beams. Such wafer-level monolithic integration of metasurfaces through VCSELs-compatible technology not only considerably simplifies the assembling process but also preserves the laser characteristics, with 2 great potential to promote various wide-field applications of VCSELs such as optical data communication, ultra-compact light detection and ranging (LiDAR), 3D sensing, and directional displays. Introduction: Vertical-cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs) have experienced a soaring development over the last 30 years, particularly after the demonstration of the first continuous-wave (cw) room-temperature device. 1-3 Their unique features such as low-power consumption, circular beam profile, wafer-level testing, large-scale two-dimensional (2D) array have made them the most versatile laser sources for a large number of applications ranging from optical communications, to instrumentation, as well as laser manufacturing and sensing. 4-6 The exploding application demands and the rapidly growing markets pose a longstanding challenge to further improve their performance while realizing precise beam control. In this context, the replacement of the top reflector with resonant structures and the incorporation of photonic crystal have been extensively employed to tune the emission, achieve high brightness,respectively. Meanwhile, considerable attention has been paid to improve the beam quality of the VCSELs, for example, by preventing high-order transverse modes 7-11 .Despite the fact that single-fundamental-mode laser can be realized by limiting the active region with a reduced oxide aperture, strong diffraction effect produces highly

Ten years of spasers and plasmonic nanolasers

“…In the near-field, the polarization and profile of each nanolaser eigenmode can be controlled, with additional control over the ensemble through coupling, relative phase, eigenmode symmetry and topology. Such cooperative eigenmode engineering is distinct from that for photonic crystal lasers, for which periodicity is the main control parameter, and could enable unprecedented control of macroscopic laser fields, with a range of far-field applications [135][136][137] .…”

Stimuli‐Responsive Dynamic Metaholographic Displays with Designer Liquid Crystal Modulators

“…[40] The proposed LC-MS not only overcomes the long-standing challenges of passive metasurfaces, but also suggests intriguing applications such as ultracompact hologram labels for smart environmental and biomedical monitoring sensors, and interactive holographic displays. Furthermore, the use a variety of designer LC platforms can be adopted in many metasurfaces applications such as electrically tunable lenses [41,42] VR/AR displays, [43,44] LiDAR applications [45][46][47] and tunable reflective displays. [48][49][50][51] Also, recently developed scalable nanomanufacturing technologies [52,53] will enable high-end product-level applications.…”

Microscopic sensors using optical wireless integrated circuits

“…Improved design and efficiency will also lead to more broadly applicable OWICs. Specifically, lower power consumption, improved communication protocols, and even longer read distances could result from exploring pulsed low duty-cycle power schemes (15), differential, radiometric measurement of two different wavelength microLEDs (34), and narrow-wavelength, collimated vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (35), respectively. Potential future applications include wireless neural recording with a sensor so small as to avoid scarring, to heat-capacity measurements of samples too small to be otherwise measured, to wireless sensors providing quantitative information inside of microfluidic systems.…”