Room Temperature Electrically Driven Ultraviolet Plasmonic Lasers

Abstract

Plasmonic lasers, which make use of the strong confinement of surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs), are key components to realize ultracompact coherent light sources at deep subwavelength scale. Currently, large metal and radiation losses of their metallic cavities limit electrically driven plasmonic lasers operation mainly at cryogenic temperature, where sufficient gain can be obtained. It is a crucial challenge to accomplish high performance electrically driven plasmonic lasers operated at room temperature. Benefiting from the large exciton binding energy and large oscillator strength of zinc oxide (ZnO) gain media, an optically pumped ultraviolet (UV) plasmonic laser is demonstrated from a hybrid metal–insulator–semiconductor structure, in which a magnesium oxide (MgO) gap layer plays a critical role in reducing the metallic loss. Further optimizing the thickness of the MgO gap layer and ZnO active layer, room temperature electrically driven UV plasmonic lasers with a threshold of 70.2 A cm‐2 are realized for the first time under the injection of electrical carriers through the metallic electrode of the hybrid structure. Localizing light in subwavelength dimension, this novel type of UV plasmonic nanolasers may find various applications in photolithography, sensing, integrated microfluidic systems for surface sterilizations and nanoscale treatment processes.

Electrically driven single microwire-based single-mode microlaser

“…The generation of electron-hole recombination occurring in the GaN region is insignificant. However, the used MgO interlayer would give rise to unfavorable characteristics, including a lower current injection, larger turn-on voltage, and lower EL efficiency 22 , 31 , 34 .…”

“…One-dimensional (1D) wire semiconductors, such as micro/nanowires, nanoribbons, nanotubes and so on, have been extensively researched for constructing light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and laser diodes (LDs) due to their passive waveguides and strong confinement of electrons, holes, and photons 17 – 22 . The lasing features acquired from previously published 1D wired laser devices are currently multiple modes due to their larger dimensions than that of the lasing wavelengths.…”

Homoepitaxial ZnO/ZnMgO Laser Structures and Their Properties

“…Recently reported room temperature electrically driven plasmonic laser can be described as nitride–oxide hybrid devices. [ 18 ] There are also similar reports about the electrically pumped random lasers based on n‐ZnO/p‐MgZnO core–shell nanowire heterostructures [ 19 ] or the electrically pumped random lasers with p‐diamond as a hole source. [ 20 ]…”

Nanowire Waveguides and Lasers: Advances and Opportunities in Photonic Circuits

“…After conducting several strategies, they successfully realized the lasing of plasmonic structures at room-temperature. In 2019, Yang et al designed and experimentally demonstrated an electrically driven UV plasmonic nanowire laser at room-temperature, realized in a p-GaN/MgO/ZnO/MgO/Ag structure, as shown in Figure 5E (Yang X. et al, 2019 ). The high optical gain coefficient, large exciton binding energy, large oscillator strength, and material stability of ZnO was selected to ensure the performance of the device under high current injection and beneficial for a faster radiative lifetime (Djurišić et al, 2010 ; Sidiropoulos et al, 2014 ; Chou et al, 2015 ) due to its facile coupling with surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs).…”