New Nanolaser Works at Room Temperature

Laser devices can be very small, like the laser diodes in DVD drives. So called nanolasers are much smaller to the tune of being invisible with the naked eye, and could one day become crucial components serving in photonic chips to transfer data at lightspeed within and between chip components. Such nanolasers only worked at minus degrees until now, a bit similar to superconductors maybe which need extreme minus temperatures. But now scientists at Arizona State University succeeded in developing them to work at room temperature without melting.

The team around Cun-Zheng Ning published their breakthrough in the journal Optics Express. The device is considered a key component for numerous applications in the field of photonics. This includes technologies like OLED, organic photovoltaics, LED but especially opto-electronic computer chips. Miniaturization is always key to increase the performance of chips, and the laser component is still one of the largest components in the mix.

Ning said that the ultimate goal among nanolaser researchers is to develop them to work at room temperatures and with low power demands which can be fed by a simple battery.

The nanolaser developed by the team consists of semiconductors that are enveloped by a layer of silver. But Ning cautions that there are still many challenges to be solved until we would see the nanolaser in actual photonic chips. Foremost, the life span of the device is still much to short, which reminds of the early problem of such technologies like LCDs and OLEDs. Another challenge is that the physical processes of the interaction between photons and the metal surface are not yet fully understood, the researchers say.

Paper:

Record performance of electrical injection sub-wavelength metallic-cavity semiconductor lasers at room temperature

https://www.opticsinfobase.org/oe/abstract.cfm?URI=oe-21-4-4728