Organic Dye-Doped PMMA Lasing.

Organic thin-film lasers gain interest as potential light sources for application in diverse fields. With the current development, they hold variety of benefits such as: low-cost, high-performance, and color-tunability. Meanwhile, the production is not complicated because both the resonator and the gain medium can be assembled by solution-processable organic materials. To our knowledge, information about using poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) as a matrix for organic dye lasers was insubstantial. Herein, the feasibility of using organic dye-doped PMMA as an organic dye laser was tested. Six different sample designs were introduced to find out the best sample model. The most optimum result was displayed by the sample design, in which the gain medium was sandwiched between the substrate and the photoresist layer with grating structure. The impact of dye concentration and grating period on peak wavelength was also investigated, which resulted in a shift of 6 nm and 25 nm, respectively. Moreover, there were in total six various organic dyes that could function well with PMMA to collectively perform as 'organic dye lasers', and they emitted in the range of 572 nm to 609 nm. Besides, one of the samples was used as a sensor platform. For instance, it was used to detect the concentration of sugar solutions.

Analysis and optimization of light outcoupling in OLEDs with external hierarchical textures.

Hierarchical textures (combining 2D periodic large and small micro textures) as an external outcoupling solution for OLEDs have been researched, both experimentally and by optical simulations. For the case of a red bottom emitting OLED, different hierarchical textures were fabricated using laser-based methods and a replication step and applied to the OLED substrate, resulting in an increased light outcoupling. Laboratory-size OLED devices with applied textured foils show a smaller increase in efficiency compared to the final large area devices. The results show that the full exploitation of textured foils in laboratory-size samples is mainly limited by the lateral size of the thin film stack area and by limited light collection area of the measuring equipment. Modeling and simulations are used to further evaluate the full prospective of hierarchical textures in large area OLED devices. Optimization of hierarchical textures is done by simultaneously changing the aspect ratios of the small and large textures and a potential of 57% improvement in EQE compared to devices without applied textures is predicted by simulations. Optimized hierarchical textures show similar outcoupling efficiencies compared to optimized single textures, while on the other hand hierarchical textures require less pronounced features, lower aspect ratios, compared to single textures to achieve the same efficiencies. Hierarchical textures also help in eliminating flat parts that limit outcoupling efficiency. Finally, the limiting factors that prevent higher outcoupling are addressed. We show that the dominant factor is non-ideal reflection from the organic thin film stack due to parasitic absorption. In addition, possible ways to further increase the outcoupling from a thick substrate are indicated.