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A room-temperature organic polariton transistor

Nature Photonics volume 13, pages 378–383 (2019)Cite this article

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Abstract

Active optical elements with ever smaller footprint and lower energy consumption are central to modern photonics. The drive for miniaturization, speed and efficiency, with the concomitant volume reduction of the optically active area, has led to the development of devices that harness strong light–matter interactions. By managing the strength of light–matter coupling to exceed losses, quasiparticles, called exciton-polaritons, are formed that combine the properties of the optical fields with the electronic excitations of the active material. By making use of polaritons in inorganic semiconductor microcavities, all-optical transistor functionality was observed, albeit at cryogenic temperatures1. Here, we replace inorganic semiconductors with a ladder-type polymer in an optical microcavity and realize room-temperature operation of a polariton transistor through vibron-mediated stimulated polariton relaxation. We demonstrate net gain of ~10 dB μm−1, sub-picosecond switching time, cascaded amplification and all-optical logic operation at ambient conditions.

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Fig. 1: Organic microcavity and relevant energy levels.
Fig. 2: Spontaneous versus dynamic polariton condensation.
Fig. 3: Characteristics of the organic polariton transistor.
Fig. 4: Cascaded amplification and logic gates.

Data availability

All data supporting this study are openly available from the University of Southampton repository at https://doi.org/10.5258/SOTON/D0792.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the assistance of T. Yagafarov in demonstrating the AND gate operation. This work was partly supported by the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) and the European Union's Horizon-2020 framework programme through the Marie-Sklodowska Curie ITN networks PHONSI (H2020-MSCA-ITN-642656), SYNCHRONICS (H2020-MSCA-ITN-643238), UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council grant EP/M025330/1 on Hybrid Polaritonics, MIT-Skoltech NGP Program and the Russian Science Foundation (RSF) grant no. 18-72-00227.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, Moscow, Russian Federation

    Anton V. Zasedatelev, Anton V. Baranikov & Pavlos G. Lagoudakis

  2. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK

    Anton V. Zasedatelev & Pavlos G. Lagoudakis

  3. IBM Research-Zurich, Rüschlikon, Switzerland

    Darius Urbonas, Fabio Scafirimuto, Thilo Stöferle & Rainer F. Mahrt

  4. Macromolecular Chemistry Group and Institute for Polymer Technology, Bergische Universität Wuppertal, Wuppertal, Germany

    Ullrich Scherf

Authors
  1. Anton V. Zasedatelev
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Contributions

R.F.M. and P.G.L. designed the research. A.V.Z. and A.V.B. performed the experiments and analysed the experimental data. D.U., F.S., T.S. and R.F.M. contributed to the design and fabrication of the organic microcavity. U.S. synthesized the organic material. The manuscript was written through contributions from all authors. All authors have given approval to the final version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Pavlos G. Lagoudakis.

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Supplementary Information

Supplementary Discussion, Supplementary Results, Supplementary Figures 1–12 and Supplementary References 1–21.

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Zasedatelev, A.V., Baranikov, A.V., Urbonas, D. et al. A room-temperature organic polariton transistor. Nat. Photonics 13, 378–383 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-019-0392-8

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