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Lasing in metallic-coated nanocavities

Nature Photonics volume 1, pages 589–594 (2007)Cite this article

Abstract

Metallic cavities can confine light to volumes with dimensions considerably smaller than the wavelength of light. It is commonly believed, however, that the high losses in metals are prohibitive for laser operation in small metallic cavities. Here we report for the first time laser operation in an electrically pumped metallic-coated nanocavity formed by a semiconductor heterostructure encapsulated in a thin gold film. The demonstrated lasers show a low threshold current and their dimensions are smaller than the smallest electrically pumped lasers reported so far. With dimensions comparable to state-of-the-art electronic transistors and operating at low power and high speed, they are a strong contender as basic elements in digital photonic very large-scale integration. Furthermore we demonstrate that metallic-coated nanocavities with modal volumes smaller than dielectric cavities can have moderate quality factors.

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Figure 1: Structure of the cavity formed by a semiconductor pillar encapsulated in gold.
Figure 2: Fabricated laser.
Figure 3: Measurement results for the fabricated laser.
Figure 4: Near-field radiation patterns of the laser.
Figure 5: Comparison of rate-equation-model predictions to 77 K measurements.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) through the NRC photonics grant (awarded to G.D.K., M.K.S. and J.H.W.). Y.H.L. would like to acknowledge support from NRL/GRL project. We thank D. Lenstra for his comments on the experimental results.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. COBRA Research Institute, Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, Postbus 513, Eindhoven, 5600, MB, The Netherlands

    Martin T. Hill, Yok-Siang Oei, Barry Smalbrugge, Youcai Zhu, Tjibbe de Vries, Peter J. van Veldhoven, Frank W. M. van Otten, Tom J. Eijkemans, Jarosław P. Turkiewicz, Huug de Waardt, Erik Jan Geluk, Richard Nötzel & Meint K. Smit

  2. Department of Physics, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon, 305-701, Korea

    Soon-Hong Kwon & Yong-Hee Lee

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  1. Martin T. Hill
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Contributions

M.T.H. discovered the nanolaser structures reported here and performed design, fabrication, characterization and manuscript preparation. Y.S.O., B.S., Y.Z., T.d.V., E.J.G. and M.K.S. contributed to process development. R.N., P.J.v.V. and F.W.M.v.O. were responsible for the epitaxial growth. Y.S.O., R.N., J.P.T. and H.d.W. contributed to studies on surface recombination. T.J.E assisted with characterization. Y.H.L. and S.H.K. contributed with expertise on nanolaser modelling. M.K.S. assisted with writing the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Martin T. Hill.

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Hill, M., Oei, YS., Smalbrugge, B. et al. Lasing in metallic-coated nanocavities. Nature Photon 1, 589–594 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2007.171

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