Controllable broadband multicolour single-mode polarized laser in a dye-assembled homoepitaxial MOF microcrystal

• Main Authors: He, Huajun, Cui, Yuanjing, Li, Hongjun, Shao, Kai, Chen, Banglin, Qian, Guodong
• Other Authors: School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2021
• Subjects: Science::Physics; Lasers, LEDs and Light Sources; Optical Materials and Structures
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/147280
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Multicolour single-mode polarized microlasers with visible to near-infrared output have very important applications in photonic integration and multimodal biochemical sensing/imaging but are very difficult to realize. Here, we demonstrate a single crystal with multiple segments based on the host-guest metal-organic framework ZJU-68 hierarchically hybridized with different dye molecules generating controllable single-mode green, red, and near-infrared lasing, with the lasing mode mechanism revealed by computational simulation. The segmented and oriented assembly of different dye molecules within the ZJU-68 microcrystal causes it to act as a shortened resonator, enabling us to achieve dynamically controllable multicolour single-mode lasing with a low three-colour-lasing threshold of ~1.72 mJ/cm2 (approximately seven times lower than that of state-of-the-art designed heterostructure alloys, as reported by Fan F et al. (Nat. Nanotechnol. 10:796-803, 2015) considering the single pulse energy density) and degree of polarization >99.9%. Furthermore, the resulting three-colour single-mode lasing possesses the largest wavelength coverage of ~186 nm (ranging from ~534 to ~720 nm) ever reported. These findings may open a new route to the exploitation of multicolour single-mode micro/nanolasers constructed by MOF engineering for photonic and biochemical applications.