Inkjet-printed vertically emitting solid-state organic lasers

Oussama Mhibik (1) , Sébastien Chénais (1) , Sébastien Forget (1) , Christophe Defranoux (2) , Sébastien Sanaur (3)

1 LPL - Laboratoire de Physique des Lasers
2 SEMILAB Semiconductor Physics Laboratory Co., Ltd
3 BEL-ENSMSE - Département Bioélectronique

In this paper, we show that Inkjet Printing can be successfully applied to external-cavity vertically-emitting thin-film organic lasers, and can be used to generate a diffraction-limited output beam with an output energy as high as 33.6 µJ with a slope efficiency S of 34%. Laser emission shows to be continuously tunable from 570 to 670 nm using an intracavity polymer-based Fabry-Perot etalon. High-optical quality films with several µm thicknesses are realized thanks to ink-jet printing. We introduce a new optical material where EMD6415 commercial ink constitutes the optical host matrix and exhibits a refractive index of 1.5 and an absorption coefficient of 0.66 cm-1 at 550-680 nm. Standard laser dyes like Pyromethene 597 and Rhodamine 640 are incorporated in solution to the EMD6415 ink. Such large size " printed pixels " of 50 mm 2 present uniform and flat surfaces, with roughness measured as low as 1.5 nm in different locations of a 50µm x 50µm AFM scan. Finally, as the gain capsules fabricated by Inkjet printing are simple and do not incorporate any tuning or cavity element, they are simple to make, have a negligible fabrication cost and can be used as fully disposable items. This works opens the way towards the fabrication of really low-cost tunable visible lasers with an affordable technology that has the potential to be widely disseminated.

Mots clés: vertically-emitting solid-state organic lasers (VECSOLs); inkjet printing; new host polymer matrix for standard laser dyes; tunable laser.

Domaines: Optique [physics.optics]

Oussama Mhibik, Sébastien Chénais, Sébastien Forget, Christophe Defranoux, Sébastien Sanaur. Inkjet-printed vertically emitting solid-state organic lasers. Journal of Applied Physics, 2016, 119, pp.173101. ⟨10.1063/1.4946826⟩. ⟨hal-01320705⟩