Mid-Infrared Lasing in Lead Sulfide Subwavelength Wires on Silicon.

Vapor-liquid-solid (VLS) growth of nanoscale or subwavelength scale semiconductor wires (nanowires) has been proven to be an important and effective approach to producing high-quality, substrate insensitive photonic materials with a flexible and ever-expanding coverage of wavelengths for lasing and other photonic applications. However, the materials and lasing demonstrations have so far been limited to mostly ultraviolet to visible wavelengths, with a few exceptions in the short-wavelength infrared range. A further extension to longer wavelengths (such as mid-infrared, MIR) using narrower band gap semiconductors encounters severe challenges: the ever decreasing radiative efficiency due to the Auger and other nonradiative channels with wavelengths demands extremely high material quality and significantly narrows the material choices. This situation is very unsatisfactory, given many important applications that demand materials and lasers of subwavelength scales for MIR wavelengths in an integrated platform, especially on silicon. Here we report our results on lasing demonstration in MIR (3-4 µm) based on a unique combination of high-quality material growth on a silicon substrate and the choice of an intrinsically strong MIR material in lead sulfide (PbS). Lasing is demonstrated from single wires both on the original silicon substrate and on the sapphire substrates after transferring, with sizes of lasing wires down to below half of the normalized volume (volume of wires divided by the wavelength cubed) and operating temperature up to 180 K. Such subwavelength wire lasers could be important for a wide range of MIR applications on silicon-based integrated photonic platforms, such as chemical and environmental sensing, free-space communications, and many others.

Room-temperature continuous-wave lasing from monolayer molybdenum ditelluride integrated with a silicon nanobeam cavity.

Monolayer transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) have the potential to become efficient optical-gain materials for low-energy-consumption nanolasers with the smallest gain media because of strong excitonic emission. However, until now TMD-based lasing has been realized only at low temperatures. Here we demonstrate for the first time a room-temperature laser operation in the infrared region from a monolayer of molybdenum ditelluride on a silicon photonic-crystal cavity. The observation is enabled by the unique combination of a TMD monolayer with an emission wavelength transparent to silicon, and a high-Q cavity of the silicon nanobeam. The laser is pumped by a continuous-wave excitation, with a threshold density of 6.6 W cm-2. Its linewidth is as narrow as 0.202 nm with a corresponding Q of 5,603, the largest value reported for a TMD laser. This demonstration establishes TMDs as practical materials for integrated TMD-silicon nanolasers suitable for silicon-based nanophotonic applications in silicon-transparent wavelengths.

A monolithic white laser.

Monolithic semiconductor lasers capable of emitting over the full visible-colour spectrum have a wide range of important applications, such as solid-state lighting, full-colour displays, visible colour communications and multi-colour fluorescence sensing. The ultimate form of such a light source would be a monolithic white laser. However, realizing such a device has been challenging because of intrinsic difficulties in achieving epitaxial growth of the mismatched materials required for different colour emission. Here, we demonstrate a monolithic multi-segment semiconductor nanosheet based on a quaternary alloy of ZnCdSSe that simultaneously lases in the red, green and blue. This is made possible by a novel nanomaterial growth strategy that enables separate control of the composition, morphology and therefore bandgaps of the segments. Our nanolaser can be dynamically tuned to emit over the full visible-colour range, covering 70% more perceptible colours than the most commonly used illuminants.

CdxPb(1-x)S alloy nanowires and heterostructures with simultaneous emission in mid-infrared and visible wavelengths.

Alloying of CdS and PbS could potentially provide an important semiconductor with a wide range of bandgaps, with bandedge emission from mid-infrared to visible green, for various optoelectronic applications. We investigate the possibility of CdPbS alloy formation in nanowire and nanobelt forms, especially the dependence of alloy composition on two different cooling routes. Our results show that rapid cooling immediately after the growth phase can lead to a high-quality uniform alloy with Cd composition larger than possible at thermal equilibrium and by natural cooling. On the contrary, unassisted natural cooling leads to the formation of axial or core-shell heterostructures, containing segments with pure CdS and CdPbS alloys with lower Cd content than through rapid cooling. Such heterostructures with green and mid-infrared emission provide simultaneous access to two widely separated wavelengths from a single monolithic structure and can be important for many applications. Our results can help identify strategies for growing nanostructures with uniform alloy of high Cd incorporation, core-shell structures with shell serving as a passivating or protecting layer, or interesting longitudinal heterostructures. Both various heterostructures and uniform alloys of these materials could be important for high-efficiency solar cells, novel detectors, and nanolasing in wide spectral ranges.

Hybrid photon-plasmon nanowire lasers.

Metallic and plasmonic nanolasers have attracted growing interest recently. Plasmonic lasers demonstrated so far operate in hybrid photon-plasmon modes in transverse dimensions, rendering it impossible to separate photonic from plasmonic components. Thus only the far-field photonic component can be measured and utilized directly. But spatially separated plasmon modes are highly desired for applications including high-efficiency coupling of single-photon emitters and ultrasensitivity optical sensing. Here, we report a nanowire (NW) laser that offers subdiffraction-limited beam size and spatially separated plasmon cavity modes. By near-field coupling a high-gain CdSe NW and a 100 nm diameter Ag NW, we demonstrate a hybrid photon-plasmon laser operating at 723 nm wavelength at room temperature, with a plasmon mode area of 0.008λ(2). This device simultaneously provides spatially separated photonic far-field output and highly localized coherent plasmon modes, which may open up new avenues in the fields of integrated nanophotonic circuits, biosensing, and quantum information processing.

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

We demonstrate a continuous wave (CW) sub-wavelength metallic-cavity semiconductor laser with electrical injection at room temperature (RT). Our metal-cavity laser with a cavity volume of 0.67λ3 (λ = 1591 nm) shows a linewidth of 0.5 nm at RT, which corresponds to a Q-value of 3182 compared to 235 of the cavity Q, the highest Q under lasing condition for RT CW operation of any sub-wavelength metallic-cavity laser. Such record performance provides convincing evidences of the feasibility of RT CW sub-wavelength metallic-cavity lasers, thus opening a wide range of practical possibilities of novel nanophotonic devices based on metal-semiconductor structures.

Removal of surface states and recovery of band-edge emission in InAs nanowires through surface passivation.

Surface states in semiconductor nanowires (NWs) are detrimental to the NW optical and electronic properties and to their light emission-based applications, due to the large surface-to-volume ratio of NWs and the congregation of defects states near surfaces. In this paper, we demonstrated an effective approach to eliminate surface states in InAs NWs of zinc-blende (ZB) and wurtzite (WZ) structures and a dramatic recovery of band edge emission through surface passivation with organic sulfide octadecylthiol (ODT). Microphotoluminescence (PL) measurements were carried out before and after passivation to study the dominant recombination mechanisms and surface state densities of the NWs. For WZ-NWs, we show that the passivation removed the surface states and recovered the band-edge emission, leading to a factor of ∼19 reduction of PL linewidth. For ZB-NWs, the deep surface states were removed and the PL peaks width became as narrow as ∼250 nm with some remaining emission of near band-edge surface states. The passivated NWs showed excellent stability in atmosphere, water, and heat environments. In particular, no observable changes occurred in the PL features from the passivated NWs exposed in air for more than five months.

Contact printing of compositionally graded CdS(x)Se(1-x) nanowire parallel arrays for tunable photodetectors.

Spatially composition-graded CdS(x)Se(1-x) (x = 0-1) nanowires are grown and transferred as parallel arrays onto Si/SiO(2) substrates by a one-step, directional contact printing process. Upon subsequent device fabrication, an array of tunable-wavelength photodetectors is demonstrated. From the spectral photoconductivity measurements, the cutoff wavelength for the device array, as determined by the bandgap, is shown to cover a significant portion of the visible spectrum. The ability to transfer a collection of crystalline semiconductor nanowires while preserving the spatially graded composition may enable a wide range of applications, such as tunable lasers and photodetectors, efficient photovoltaics, and multiplexed chemical sensors.

Composition and bandgap-graded semiconductor alloy nanowires.

Semiconductor alloy nanowires with spatially graded compositions (and bandgaps) provide a new material platform for many new multifunctional optoelectronic devices, such as broadly tunable lasers, multispectral photodetectors, broad-band light emitting diodes (LEDs) and high-efficiency solar cells. In this review, we will summarize the recent progress on composition graded semiconductor alloy nanowires with bandgaps graded in a wide range. Depending on different growth methods and material systems, two typical nanowire composition grading approaches will be presented in detail, including composition graded alloy nanowires along a single substrate and those along single nanowires. Furthermore, selected examples of applications of these composition graded semiconductor nanowires will be presented and discussed, including tunable nanolasers, multi-terminal on-nanowire photodetectors, full-spectrum solar cells, and white-light LEDs. Finally, we will make some concluding remarks with future perspectives including opportunities and challenges in this research area.

All-semiconductor active plasmonic system in mid-infrared wavelengths.

Metal-based plasmonics has a wide range of important applications but is subject to several drawbacks. In this paper, we propose and investigate an all-semiconductor-based approach to plasmonics in mid-infrared (MIR) wavelength range using InAs heterostructures. Our results show that InAs heterostructures are ideal for plasmonics with the shortest plasmon wavelength among common semiconductors. More importantly, as we will show, InAs heterostructures are superior to metal-based plasmonics for MIR applications due to much reduced loss, improved confinement, and ease of tunability of resonant wavelengths through carrier density. Finally, we propose and investigate a monolithic all-semiconductor integrated active plasmonic system with active source, waveguide, and detector all integrated on a chip, realizable in a single epitaxial growth process. Such an all semiconductor based system can be advantageous not only in plasmonics, but also in active metamaterials.

High-performance laterally-arranged multiple-bandgap solar cells using spatially composition-graded CdxPb1-xS nanowires on a single substrate: a design study.

In this paper, laterally arranged multiple bandgap (LAMB) solar cells based on CdxPb1-xS alloy nanowires of varying composition on a single substrate are designed to be used together with a dispersive concentrator. Simulation results for a design with six subcells in series connection are presented. The design is based on a unique materials capability achieved in our recent research. An efficiency of 34.9% was obtained for operation without solar concentration, which increased to 40.5%, 41.7%, and 42.7% for concentration ratios of 25, 100, and 240 respectively. The device was also simulated with decreased carrier mobilities to model the possible reduction in absorber conductivity, depending on the nanowire geometry and configuration. For a concentration ratio of unity, decreasing the mobilities to 25% of their original values caused less than a 2.5% absolute drop in efficiency. The LAMB design offers the advantages of an integrated cell platform and the potential for low-cost, high efficiency photovoltaic systems.

Photoluminescence properties of InAs nanowires grown on GaAs and Si substrates.

We report the first photoluminescence (PL) characterization of InAs nanowires (NWs). The InAs NWs were grown on GaAs(111) B and Si(111) substrates using the Au-assisted molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) growth technique or metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD). We compared the PL response of four samples grown under different conditions using MBE or MOCVD. High-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) and selected area electron diffraction (SAED) patterns were utilized to determine the crystal structure and growth directions of the NWs to relate PL features to NW structural parameters. We observed mainly three PL peaks which were below, near and above InAs bandgaps, respectively. Temperature and excitation intensity dependence PL measurements were also performed to help elucidate the origins of the PL peaks of NWs. Of particular interest was a band-edge emission peak that was blue-shifted due to quantization effects of the InAs NWs, as confirmed by our calculation.

Continuous alloy-composition spatial grading and superbroad wavelength-tunable nanowire lasers on a single chip.

By controlling local substrate temperature in a chemical vapor deposition system, we have successfully achieved spatial composition grading covering the complete composition range of ternary alloy CdSSe nanowires on a single substrate of 1.2 cm in length. Spatial photoluminescence scan along the substrate length shows peak wavelength changes continuously from approximately 500 to approximately 700 nm. Furthermore, we show that under strong optical pumping, every spot along the substrate length displays lasing behavior. Thus our nanowire chip provides a spatially continuously tunable laser with a superbroad wavelength tuning range, unmatched by any other available semiconductor-based technology.

Electrical injection in longitudinal and coaxial heterostructure nanowires: a comparative study through a three-dimensional simulation.

We carried out a comparative study of electrical injection in longitudinal p-i-n and coaxial p-n core-shell nanowires by performing a three-dimensional numerical simulation. In the case of the core-shell structure, we show that both electrons and holes of high density can be efficiently injected into and confined in the structure even without an i-region. The required bias voltage and doping concentrations in the core-shell structure are smaller than those in the longitudinal p-i-n structure to achieve the same carrier injection level. Furthermore, we show that a type-I band alignment, as required in traditional p-i-n structure is not necessary in core-shell structure, allowing more flexibility in nanowire devices design. Our results thus provide a theoretical foundation and understanding that a core-shell structure is far superior to the longitudinal p-i-n structure for electrical injection nanowire lasers.

Biexciton gain and the Mott transition in GaAs quantum wires.

Optical gain and the Mott transition in GaAs quantum wires were studied via simultaneous measurements of absorption and photoluminescence (PL). We observed well-separated PL peaks assigned to excitons (X) and biexcitons (XX) even at densities where optical gain existed. A sharp optical gain first appeared when the XX peak overtook the X peak, indicating the gain origin of biexciton-exciton population inversion. The XX peak eventually changed to a broad peak of plasma, and a broad gain due to plasma was observed as the Mott transition was completed.

Two-photon lasers based on intersubband transitions in semiconductor quantum wells.

We propose to make a two-photon laser based on intersubband (sublevel) transitions in semiconductor nanostructures. The advantages and feasibility of such a two-photon laser are analyzed in detail using the density matrix approach. Both one-photon and two-photon gains in a three subband quantum well structure are studied on the same footing to show how the two-photon gain can be maximized, while the competing one-photon gain is minimized. The results show that a sufficient two-photon gain can be achieved to overcome one-photon competition and the loss of a conventional semiconductor cavity, making intersubband transitions one of the very few feasible approaches to two-photon lasing.

Induced transparency by intersubband plasmon coupling in a quantum well.

We study coupling of two intersubband plasmons associated with dipole-allowed cascading transitions in a quantum well. We show that the coupling can lead to the disappearance of the lower-energy resonance accompanied by an anticrossing behavior. Such coupling induced anomalies are of collective and resonant nature and provide the first example of Coulomb interaction induced transparency. Our numerical results from a microscopic theory are confirmed by an analytical model.

Far-field emission of a semiconductor nanowire laser.

The polarization properties and angular distribution of intensity of the far fields from a nanowire laser are investigated. The far-field emission depends strongly on the mode type (HE11, TE01, TM01) and the radius of the nanowire. The emission is weakly directional, and a large part of it can be emitted in the backward direction. Our results can be applied for experimental determination of a lasing mode by its far fields as well as for optimization of laser emission.

Interplay of collective excitations in quantum-well intersubband resonances.

Intersubband resonances in a semiconductor quantum well (QW) display fascinating features involving various collective excitations such as Fermi-edge singularity (FES) and intersubband plasmon (ISP). Using a density matrix approach, we treated many-body effects such as depolarization, vertex correction, and self-energy consistently for a two-subband system. We found a systematic change in resonance spectra from FES- to ISP-dominated features, as QW width or electron density is varied. Such an interplay between FES and ISP significantly changes both line shape and peak position of the absorption spectrum. We found that a cancellation of FES and ISP undresses the resonant responses and recovers the single-particle features of absorption for semiconductors with a strong nonparabolicity such as InAs, leading to a dramatic broadening of the absorption spectrum.

Introduction.

Several recent developments have resulted in considerable progress in the study of transverse effects and spatial mode dynamics in semiconductor lasers. Demands on higher and higher output powers have led to the development of wide-stripe lasers, coupled laser arrays, integrated master-oscillator power amplifiers (MOPAs), and other more complex laser structures for which spatial dependence of the laser mode becomes important. This is especially true for the vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs), devices that have recently become commercially available and are being proposed for a multitude of interesting applications. In the case of a VCSEL, the transverse-mode behavior is inherently more complex compared with the traditional edge-emitting lasers because of a large Fresnel number associated with VCSELs. The recent interest in spatio-temporal dynamics of such lasers as an example of well-controlled, spatially extended, self-organizing systems has led to new understanding about patterns, defects, and other coherent and incoherent structures, all being important to large-aperture diode lasers.