Comparison of the performance of photonic band-edge liquid crystal lasers using different dyes as the gain medium
- 15 February 2010
- journal article
- research article
- Published by AIP Publishing in Journal of Applied Physics
- Vol. 107 (4), 043101
- https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3284939
Abstract
The primary concern of this work is to study the emission characteristics of a series of chiralnematic liquid crystal lasers doped with different laser dyes (DCM, pyrromethene 580, and pyrromethene 597) at varying concentrations by weight ( 0.5 – 2 wt % ) when optically pumped at 532 nm. Long-wavelength photonic band-edge laser emission is characterized in terms of threshold energy and slope efficiency. At every dye concentration investigated, the pyrromethene 597-doped lasers exhibit the highest slope efficiency (ranging from 15% to 32%) and the DCM-doped lasers the lowest (ranging from 5% to 13%). Similarly, the threshold was found to be, in general, higher for the DCM-doped laser samples in comparison to the pyrromethene-doped laser samples. These results are then compared with the spectral properties, quantum efficiencies and, where possible, fluorescence lifetimes of the dyes dispersed in a common nematic host. In accordance with the low thresholds and high slope efficiencies, the results show that the molar extinction coefficients and quantum efficiencies are considerably larger for the pyrromethene dyes in comparison to DCM, when dispersed in the liquid crystal host.Keywords
This publication has 29 references indexed in Scilit:
- Emission characteristics of a homologous series of bimesogenic liquid-crystal lasersPhysical Review E, 2007
- Correlations between the performance characteristics of a liquid crystal laser and the macroscopic material propertiesPhysical Review E, 2006
- Photonics and lasing in liquid crystal materialsPhilosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 2006
- Stokes parameter studies of spontaneous emission from chiral nematic liquid crystals as a one-dimensional photonic stopband crystal: Experiment and theoryPhysical Review E, 2005
- Enhanced emission from liquid-crystal lasersJournal of Applied Physics, 2004
- Polymeric solid-state dye lasers: Recent developmentsPhysical Chemistry Chemical Physics, 2003
- Fluorescence of a dye-doped cholesteric liquid crystal film in the region of the stop band: theory and experimentZeitschrift für Physik B Condensed Matter, 2003
- Low-threshold lasing at the edge of a photonic stop band in cholesteric liquid crystalsOptics Letters, 1998
- Strong localization of photons in certain disordered dielectric superlatticesPhysical Review Letters, 1987
- Inhibited Spontaneous Emission in Solid-State Physics and ElectronicsPhysical Review Letters, 1987