Advances in small lasers

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1 SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION DOI: /NPHOTON Martin T. Hill 1, Malte C. Gather 2 1 School of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering, The University of Western Australia, Crawley 6009, Australia, m.t.hill@ieee.org 2 SUPA, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of St Andrews, North Haugh, St Andrews KY16 9SS, UK, mcg6@st andrews.ac.uk Advances in small lasers Supplementary Information Figure S1. Timeline of the development of various forms of small lasers from first demonstration then onto electrical, CW and room temperature operation, and in some cases already to commercial applications. The development time from initial demonstrations of a laser type to applications appears to be between 10 and 20 years. However, compared to the more conventional dielectric small lasers, the recently developed metal cavity lasers have seen a very rapid development. Abbreviations : LT low temperature (mostly for first demonstrations), RT room temperature, E electrically pumped, O optically pumped, P pulsed operation, CW continuous operation, APPS first applications. References for the data points on the timeline are given below. [1] H. Soda, K. Iga, GaInAsP/InP surface emitting injection lasers, Jpn. J. Appl. Phys., 18, pp , (1979). [2] K. Iga, Surface emiting laser Its birth and generation of new optoelectronics field, IEEE Journal on Selected topics in Quantum Electronics, vol. 6, no. 6, pp , (2000). [3] Y. H. Lee, J. L. Jewell, A. Scherer, S. L. McCall, J. P. Harbison, L. T. Florez, Room temperature continuous wave vertical cavity single quantum well microlaser diodes, Electronics Letters, vol. 25, no. 20, pp , (1989). [4] S. L. McCall, A. F. J. Levi, R. E. Slusher, S. J. Pearton, R. A. Logan, Whispering gallery mode microdisk lasers, Appl. Phys. Lett. 60, pp , (1992). [5] M. Lebby, et. al., Use of VCSEL arrays for parallel optical interconnects, in Proc. SPIE Fabrication, Testing, and Reliability of Semiconductor Lasers, vol. 2683, pp , (1996). [6] M. Fujita, A. Sakai, T. Baba, Ultrasmall and ultralow threshold GaInAsP InP microdisk injection lasers: Design, fabrication, lasing characteristics, and spontaneous emission factor, IEEE J. Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics, 5, pp , (1999). [7] Painter, O. et al. Two dimensional photonic band gap defect mode laser. Science 284, (1999). NATURE PHOTONICS 1

2 2 [8] J K. Hwang et. al., Room temperature triangular lattice two dimensional photonic band gap laser operating at 1.54 m, Appl. Phys. Lett., 76, pp , (2000). [9] H G. Park, et. al., Electrically driven single cell photonic crystal laser, Science, 305, pp , (2004). [10] M. T. Hill, et al., Lasing in Metallic Coated Nanocavities, Nature Photonics 1, (2007). [11] M. T. Hill, et al, Lasing in metal insulator metal sub wavelength plasmonic waveguides, Optics Express 17, (2009). [12] M. A. Noginov, et al, Demonstration of a spaser based nanolaser, Nature 460, (2009). [13] R.F. Oulton, et al, Plasmon lasers at deep subwavelength scale, Nature 461, (2009). [14] J. Van Campenhout, et al., Low footprint optical interconnect on an SOI chip through heterogeneous integration of InP based microdisk lasers and microdetectors, IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett., 21, pp , (2009). [15] M. P. Nezhad, A. Simic, O. Bondaenko, B. Slutsky, A. Mizrahi, L. Feng, V. Lomakin, and Y. Fainman, Roomtemperature subwavelength metallo dielectric lasers Nature Photonics 4, (2010). [16] R M. Ma, R. F. Oulton, V. J. Sorger, G. Bartal, X. Zhang, Room temperature sub diffraction limited plasmon laser by total internal reflection, Nat. Mat. Vol. 10, pp , (2011). [17] S. Matsuo et. al., Room temperature continuous wave operation of lateral current injection wavelength sale embedded active region photonic crystal laser, Optics Express, 20, pp , (2012). [18] M. Khajavikhan, A. Simic, M. Katzm J. H. Lee, B. Slutsky, A. Mizrahi, V. Lomakin, Y. Fainman, Thresholdless nanoscale coaxial lasers, Nature, vol. 482, pp , (2012). [19] K. Ding, M. T. Hill, Z. C. Liu, L. J. Yin, P. J. van Veldhoven, C. Z. Ning, Record performance of electrical injection sub wavelength metallic cavity semiconductor lasers at room temperature, Opt. Express, vol. 21, pp , (2013).

3 3 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24 Figure S2. Typical net material gain G 0 available from different classes of materials considered for use in small lasers. Colored bars give approximate indication of the gain achievable in practice. Points represent values reported in the literature. For references see list below. Squares: Measured for electrical pumping. Circles: Measured using ASE and ns optical pumping. Triangles: Measured under sub ps optical excitation. Open symbols: Gain achieved at cryogenic temperatures. (Illustrative pictures taken from Refs 22,25,26.) 1. Yariv, A. Quantum Electronics. (Wiley, 3rd ed, 1989). 2. Commercial Semiconductor Optical Amplifier, InP/InGaAsP Quantum Well. at < 3. Chang, S. W., Lin, T. R. & Chuang, S. L. Theory of plasmonic fabry perot nanolasers. Opt. Express 18, (2010). 4. Ding, K. et al. Record performance of electrical injection sub wavelength metallic cavity semiconductor lasers at room temperature. Opt. Express 21, (2013). 5. Oulton, R. F. et al. Plasmon lasers at deep subwavelength scale. Nature 461, (2009). 6. Schlereth, T. W., Schneider, C., Kaiser, W., Hofling, S. & Forchel, A. Low threshold, high gain AlGaInAs quantum dot lasers. Appl. Phys. Lett. 90, (2007). 7. Lingk, C. et al. Dynamics of amplified spontaneous emission in InAs/GaAs quantum dots. Appl. Phys. Lett. 76, 3507 (2000). 8. Kirstaedter, N. et al. Gain and differential gain of single layer InAs/GaAs quantum dot injection lasers. Appl. Phys. Lett. 69, 1226 (1996). 9. Schmidt, O. G. et al. Prevention of gain saturation by multi layer quantum dot lasers. Electron. Lett. 32, (1996). 10. Lam, S. & Damzen, M. Characterisation of solid state dyes and their use as tunable laser amplifiers. Appl. Phys. B 77, (2003). 11. Mohan, D., Gaur, A., Sharma, A. K. & Singh, R. D. Photoquenching in laser grade dyes: Part I. J. Lumin. 43, 363 (1989). 12. Rabbani Haghighi, H. et al. Laser operation in nondoped thin films made of a small molecule organic redemitter. Appl. Phys. Lett. 95, (2009). 13. Riechel, S. et al. Very compact tunable solid state laser utilizing a thin film organic semiconductor. Opt. Lett. 26, (2001).

4 4 14. Xia, R., Heliotis, G. & Bradley, D. D. C. Fluorene based polymer gain media for solid state laser emission across the full visible spectrum. Appl. Phys. Lett. 82, 3599 (2003). 15. Zenz, C. et al. Highly directional stimulated emission from a polymer waveguide. J. Appl. Phys. 84, 5445 (1998). 16. Mcgehee, M. D. et al. Amplified spontaneous emission from photopumped films of a conjugated polymer. Phys. Rev. B 58, (1998). 17. Heliotis, G., Bradley, D. D. C., Turnbull, G. A. & Samuel, I. D. W. Light amplification and gain in polyfluorene waveguides. Appl. Phys. Lett. 81, 415 (2002). 18. Doering, S., Riedl, T., Rabe, T. & Kowalsky, W. Optical Investigation of Organic Laser Active Materials by Spectroscopic Waveguide Measurements. in MRS Fall Meet. Symp. Q Org. Microlasers From Fundam. to Device Appl. Q5.01 (2013). 19. Virgili, T. et al. An ultrafast spectroscopy study of stimulated emission in poly (9,9 dioctylfluorene) films and microcavities. Appl. Phys. Lett. 74, (1999). 20. Wegmann, G. et al. The dynamics of gain narrowing in a ladder type π conjugated polymer. Chem. Phys. Lett. 312, (1999). 21. Chan, Y., Caruge, J. M., Snee, P. T. & Bawendi, M. G. Multiexcitonic two state lasing in a CdSe nanocrystal laser. Appl. Phys. Lett. 85, 2460 (2004). 22. Dang, C. et al. Red, green and blue lasing enabled by single exciton gain in colloidal quantum dot films. Nat. Nanotechnol. 7, (2012). 23. Signorini, R. et al. Facile production of up converted quantum dot lasers. Nanoscale 3, 4109 (2011). 24. Klimov, V. I. et al. Optical Gain and Stimulated Emission in Nanocrystal Quantum Dots. Science 290, (2000). 25. Dimastrodonato, V., Mereni, L. O., Young, R. J. & Pelucchi, E. Growth and structural characterization of pyramidal site controlled quantum dots with high uniformity and spectral purity. Phys. Status Solidi 247, (2010). 26. Wang, Z. B. et al. Unlocking the full potential of organic light emitting diodes on flexible plastic. Nat. Photonics 5, (2011).

5 5 Figure S3. Key properties of various types of small lasers over the past > 20 years. a) critical minimum size in one dimension (solid symbols) and overall minimum laser volume (open symbols), both relative to the free space wavelength λ 0 of the emitted light. b) Q factor of the laser cavity and c) threshold of the laser in µw for CW optically pumped lasers and in µa for lasers operated by electrical pumping (pulsed or CW). Open symbols are for cryogenic temperatures and filled for RT. On green bars: diamonds VCSELs, squares microdisk, circles photonic crystal; on grey bars: triangles up metallic photon, triangles down metallic plasmon. Note the strong divide in characteristics between the dielectric and metal cavity lasers with regard to size and Q factor. Metallic structures dominate for critical dimensions and volume below λ 0 and λ 0 3, respectively; they also show Q factors less than References corresponding to the data points shown are given below.

6 6 [1] J. L. Jewell, S. L. McCall, Y. H. Lee, A. Scherer, A. C. Gossard, J. H. English, Lasing characteristics of GaAs microresonators, App. Phys. Lett., 54, pp , (1989) [2] Y. H. Lee, J. L. Jewell, A. Scherer, S. L. McCall, J. P. Harbison, L. T. Florez, Room temperature continuous wave vertical cavity single quantum well microlaser diodes, Electronics Letters, vol. 25, no. 20, pp , (1989). [3] G. M. Yang, M. H. MacDougal, P. D. Dapkus, Ultralow threshold current vertical cavity surface emitting lasers obtained with selective oxidation, Electron. Lett. Vol. 31, pp , (1995). [4] Painter, O. et al. Two dimensional photonic band gap defect mode laser. Science 284, (1999). [5] M. Fujita, A. Sakai, T. Baba, Ultrasmall and ultralow threshold GaInAsP InP microdisk injection lasers: Design, fabrication, lasing characteristics, and spontaneous emission factor, IEEE J. Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics, 5, pp , (1999). [6] M. Fujita, R. Ushigome, T. Baba, Continuous wave lasing in GaInAsP microdisk injection laser with threshold current of 40 A, Electron. Lett., 36, pp , (2000). [7] H G. Park, et. al., Electrically driven single cell photonic crystal laser, Science, 305, pp , (2004). [8] M. T. Hill, et al., Lasing in Metallic Coated Nanocavities, Nature Photonics 1, (2007). [9] M. T. Hill, et al, Lasing in metal insulator metal sub wavelength plasmonic waveguides, Optics Express 17, (2009). [10] M. A. Noginov, et al, Demonstration of a spaser based nanolaser, Nature 460, (2009). [11] R.F. Oulton, et al, Plasmon lasers at deep subwavelength scale, Nature 461, (2009). [12] J. Van Campenhout, et al., Low footprint optical interconnect on an SOI chip through heterogeneous integration of InP based microdisk lasers and microdetectors, IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett., 21, pp , (2009). [13] M. P. Nezhad, A. Simic, O. Bondaenko, B. Slutsky, A. Mizrahi, L. Feng, V. Lomakin, and Y. Fainman, Roomtemperature subwavelength metallo dielectric lasers Nature Photonics 4, (2010). [14] K. Yu, A. Lakhani, M. C. Wu, Subwavelength metal optic semiconductor nanopatch lasers, Opt. Express, vol. 18. Pp , (2010). [15] M. Khajavikhan, A. Simic, M. Katzm J. H. Lee, B. Slutsky, A. Mizrahi, V. Lomakin, Y. Fainman, Thresholdless nanoscale coaxial lasers, Nature, vol. 482, pp , (2012). [16] K. Takeda et. al., Few fj/bit data transmissions using directly modulated lambda scale embedded active region photonic crystal laser, Nature Photonic, 7, pp , (2013). [17] K. Ding, M. T. Hill, Z. C. Liu, L. J. Yin, P. J. van Veldhoven, C. Z. Ning, Record performance of electrical injection sub wavelength metallic cavity semiconductor lasers at room temperature, Opt. Express, vol. 21, pp , (2013). [18] S. Strauf et. al., Self tuned quantum dot gain in photonic crystal laser, Physical Review Letters 96, (2006). [19] M. Nomura, N. Kumagai, S. Iwamoto, Y. Ota, Y. Arakawa, Photonic crystal nanocavity laser with a single quantum dot gain, Optics Express 17, (2009). [20] B. Ellis et. al., Ultralow threshold electrically pumped quantum dot photonic crystal nanocavity laser, Nature Photonics 5, (2011).