Issue 42, 2023

Transferable microfiber laser arrays for high-sensitivity thermal sensing

Abstract

Functional microfibers have attracted extensive attention due to their potential in health monitoring, radiation cooling, power management and luminescence. Among these, polymer fiber-based microlasers have plentiful applications due to their merits of full color, high quality factor and simple fabrication. However, developing a facile approach to fabricate stable microfiber lasing devices for high-sensitivity thermal sensing is still challenging. In this research, we propose a design of a stable and transferable membrane inlaid with whispering-gallery-mode plasmon hybrid microlaser arrays for thermal sensing. By integrating plasmonic gold nanorods with polymer lasing microfiber arrays that are embedded in the polydimethylsiloxane matrix, whispering-gallery-mode lasing arrays with high quality are achieved. Based on the thermo-optical effect of the membrane, a tuning range of 1.462 nm for the lasing peak shift under temperature variation from 30.6 °C to 38.7 °C is obtained. The ultimate thermal sensing sensitivity can reach up to 0.181 nm °C−1 and the limit of detection is 0.131 °C, with a high figure of merit of 2.961 °C−1. Moreover, a stable laser linewidth can be maintained within the tuning range due to plasmon-improved photon confinement and PDMS-reduced scattering loss. This work is expected to provide a facile approach for the fabrication of high-sensitivity on-chip thermometry devices.

Graphical abstract: Transferable microfiber laser arrays for high-sensitivity thermal sensing

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
28 Jun 2023
Accepted
24 Sep 2023
First published
25 Sep 2023

Nanoscale, 2023,15, 16976-16983

Transferable microfiber laser arrays for high-sensitivity thermal sensing

J. Ruan, Y. Li, J. Lin, Z. Ren, N. Iqbal, D. Guo and T. Zhai, Nanoscale, 2023, 15, 16976 DOI: 10.1039/D3NR03118G

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