Nanoplasmonically-engineered random lasing in organic semiconductor thin films

Abstract

We demonstrate plasmonically nano-engineered coherent random lasing and stimulated emission enhancement in a hybrid gain medium of organic semiconductors doped with core–shell plasmonic nanoparticles. The gain medium is composed of a 300 ± 2 nm thin waveguide of an organic semiconductor, doped with 53 nm gold nanoparticle cores, isolated within silica shells. Upon loading the nanoparticles, the threshold of amplified spontaneous emission is reduced from 1.75 μJ cm⁻² × 10² for an undoped gain medium, to 0.35 μJ cm⁻² × 10² for a highly concentrated gain medium, and lasing spikes narrower than 0.1 nm are obtained. Most importantly, selection of silica shells with thicknesses of 10, 17 and 21 nm enables engineering of the plasmon–exciton energy coupling and consequently tuning of the laser slope efficiency. With this approach, the slope efficiency is increased by two times by decreasing the silica shell from 21 nm down to 10 nm, due to the enhancement of the localized electric field.