CN107959224B - Surface plasmon laser based on metal cavity - Google Patents
Surface plasmon laser based on metal cavity Download PDFInfo
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- CN107959224B CN107959224B CN201810007648.XA CN201810007648A CN107959224B CN 107959224 B CN107959224 B CN 107959224B CN 201810007648 A CN201810007648 A CN 201810007648A CN 107959224 B CN107959224 B CN 107959224B
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- H—ELECTRICITY
- H01—ELECTRIC ELEMENTS
- H01S—DEVICES USING THE PROCESS OF LIGHT AMPLIFICATION BY STIMULATED EMISSION OF RADIATION [LASER] TO AMPLIFY OR GENERATE LIGHT; DEVICES USING STIMULATED EMISSION OF ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION IN WAVE RANGES OTHER THAN OPTICAL
- H01S5/00—Semiconductor lasers
- H01S5/04—Processes or apparatus for excitation, e.g. pumping, e.g. by electron beams
- H01S5/041—Optical pumping
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- H—ELECTRICITY
- H01—ELECTRIC ELEMENTS
- H01S—DEVICES USING THE PROCESS OF LIGHT AMPLIFICATION BY STIMULATED EMISSION OF RADIATION [LASER] TO AMPLIFY OR GENERATE LIGHT; DEVICES USING STIMULATED EMISSION OF ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION IN WAVE RANGES OTHER THAN OPTICAL
- H01S5/00—Semiconductor lasers
- H01S5/02—Structural details or components not essential to laser action
- H01S5/028—Coatings ; Treatment of the laser facets, e.g. etching, passivation layers or reflecting layers
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- H—ELECTRICITY
- H01—ELECTRIC ELEMENTS
- H01S—DEVICES USING THE PROCESS OF LIGHT AMPLIFICATION BY STIMULATED EMISSION OF RADIATION [LASER] TO AMPLIFY OR GENERATE LIGHT; DEVICES USING STIMULATED EMISSION OF ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION IN WAVE RANGES OTHER THAN OPTICAL
- H01S5/00—Semiconductor lasers
- H01S5/10—Construction or shape of the optical resonator, e.g. extended or external cavity, coupled cavities, bent-guide, varying width, thickness or composition of the active region
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- H—ELECTRICITY
- H01—ELECTRIC ELEMENTS
- H01S—DEVICES USING THE PROCESS OF LIGHT AMPLIFICATION BY STIMULATED EMISSION OF RADIATION [LASER] TO AMPLIFY OR GENERATE LIGHT; DEVICES USING STIMULATED EMISSION OF ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION IN WAVE RANGES OTHER THAN OPTICAL
- H01S5/00—Semiconductor lasers
- H01S5/30—Structure or shape of the active region; Materials used for the active region
Abstract
The invention discloses a surface plasmon laser based on a metal cavity, which comprises a surface plasmon waveguide and a metal cavity. The metal cavity is embedded in the surface plasmon waveguide by utilizing an etching technology and is used as a resonant cavity of the laser, so that the shape and the size of the metal cavity can be accurately controlled. The reflectivity of the cavity mirror of the metal cavity to the surface plasmon mode in the cavity exceeds 90%, so that the Q value of the surface plasmon laser in the metal cavity is as high as 1170. The surface plasmon laser provided by the invention adopts the metal cavity as the resonant cavity of the laser, and has the advantages of small physical size, large quality factor, accurate control of shape and size, simple and mature preparation process, room-temperature operation, compatibility with electronic chips and the like.
Description
Technical Field
The invention relates to a micro laser, in particular to a surface plasmon laser based on a metal cavity.
Background
For half a century, lasers are rapidly evolving toward smaller volumes, faster modulation speeds, higher power, higher efficiency, and the like. However, conventional semiconductor lasers are limited by diffraction limits, which cannot exceed half the wavelength of the optical field, both in the optical field mode size and in the physical size of the device. Therefore, how to further reduce the size of the laser, provide a coherent light source for future nanoscale integrated optical chips, and realize a microminiature laser under nanoscale is always a key problem to be solved in the laser technical field.
Recent studies have shown that surface plasmons localized at the metal-medium interface can limit the optical field to sub-wavelength or even deep sub-wavelength dimensions, thus breaking the diffraction limit. The nano laser based on the surface plasmon utilizes the surface plasmon mode in the waveguide to realize three-dimensional restriction and transmission of the light field, and nano-level laser emission breaking through diffraction limit is generated through resonant cavity feedback amplification.
2009, california in the United statesZhang Xiang et al, university berkeley division, report for the first time a surface plasmon laser based on CdS semiconductor nanowires with an optical mode size one hundred times smaller than the diffraction limit. The laser consists of a hybridized surface plasmon waveguide, which is sequentially provided with a CdS semiconductor nanowire with high gain and MgF with thickness of 5nm from top to bottom 2 An insulating gap layer and a metallic silver film. The waveguide structure can limit the surface plasmon mode of the interface of the semiconductor nanowire and the metallic silver film to MgF with low refractive index 2 The energy loss of the mode in metal is greatly reduced by transmission in the insulating gap layer, so that the long-distance transmission of the surface plasma laser wave is realized. In such a laser, the nanowire is both the gain medium, while both end faces of the nanowire constitute a Fabry-Perot (F-P) cavity, acting as a resonant cavity for the laser. The surface plasma laser wave propagating along the nanowire is reflected back and forth by the two end faces of the nanowire, and is continuously amplified by the gain medium in the transmission process to finally realize laser excitation. Thereafter, many researchers have realized various wavelengths as well as wavelength-tunable surface plasmon lasers using such a waveguide structure composed of a metal film, an insulating medium, and a semiconductor nanowire. However, due to the reflectivity of the surface plasmon wave at the nanowire end face<The reflection loss of the resonant cavity is large, so that the laser based on the semiconductor nanowire can only work in an ultralow-temperature environment. In addition, since the nanowires are grown by chemical vapor deposition or the like, the physical size and shape of the nanowires (i.e., the resonant cavity of the laser) are difficult to precisely control.
Disclosure of Invention
The invention aims to solve the main technical problems of providing a surface plasmon laser based on a metal cavity, which overcomes the defects of the surface plasmon laser based on a semiconductor nanowire in the background art, can precisely control the physical size of the laser and can work at room temperature
In order to solve the technical problems, the invention provides a surface plasmon laser based on a metal cavity, which comprises a surface plasmon waveguide and the metal cavity; the surface plasmon waveguide comprises a transparent substrate layer, a metal thin film layer, a first insulating medium layer, a gain medium layer, a second insulating medium layer and a metal thick film layer which are sequentially stacked; the metal cavity is embedded in the surface plasmon waveguide by using an etching technology and serves as a resonant cavity of the laser, consists of a vertical metal reflecting mirror and extends from the metal thick film layer to the transparent substrate layer.
In a preferred embodiment: the metal thick film layer, the metal thin film layer and the metal cavity are made of any one of gold, silver, aluminum and copper; the metal film layer is plated on the transparent substrate by magnetron sputtering, electron beam evaporation or pulse laser deposition and other methods.
In a preferred embodiment: the insulating medium layer is one of magnesium difluoride, aluminum oxide, silicon dioxide and lithium fluoride; the thickness of the insulating medium layer is between 5 and 50nm, and the insulating medium layer is positioned between the metal film layer and the gain medium layer. And depositing on the metal film layer or the gain medium layer by an electron beam evaporation and atomic layer deposition method.
In a preferred embodiment, the gain medium layer is one of a semiconductor nanobelt, a semiconductor nanowire, a semiconductor quantum dot, or a medium doped with laser dye molecules, which are made of a light emitting semiconductor. The light emitting semiconductor material may be one of cadmium selenide, cadmium sulfide, zinc oxide, gallium arsenide, indium gallium nitride, and indium gallium arsenide phosphide; the medium doped with laser dye molecules adopts rhodamine or sodium fluorescein; the light emitting semiconductor is grown by Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD), molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE), hydrothermal method, or the like. Media incorporating laser dye molecules incorporate dye molecules into the media by direct incorporation or diffusion.
In a preferred embodiment: the metal cavity is one of a parallel plane cavity, a concave-convex cavity, a flat concave cavity, a circular cavity, a triangular cavity, a quadrilateral cavity and a polygonal cavity.
The preparation of the metal cavity comprises two steps: firstly, etching a region with the same shape and size as a cavity mirror on a surface plasmon waveguide by using an etching technology; and depositing a metal film with the thickness of more than 1 micron on the etched area, wherein the etched area is completely filled with metal to form the metal reflector.
The working principle of the surface plasmon laser based on the metal cavity provided by the invention is as follows: the pumping light is incident on a gain medium layer in the metal cavity from one side of the transparent substrate, electrons in the gain medium layer absorb photon energy and then undergo energy level transition, electrons in a high energy state transfer energy to a surface plasmon mode on an interface between the gain medium layer and the metal film layer in the process of returning to a ground state, and when the pumping light power exceeds the lasing threshold of the surface plasmon mode, stimulated radiation occurs, and surface plasmon laser is generated through feedback amplification of the metal cavity.
The invention has the advantages that:
1. the invention adopts the metal cavity as the resonant cavity, the reflectivity of the surface plasmon mode propagating along the waveguide at the cavity mirror of the metal cavity is more than 90 percent, which is far more than the reflectivity (< 20 percent) of the surface plasmon mode at the end face of the nanowire, so that the metal cavity is used as the resonant cavity to effectively reduce the reflection loss of the resonant cavity and improve the Q value of laser, thereby reducing the lasing threshold of the surface plasmon laser and enabling the surface plasmon laser to work at room temperature.
2. The shape and size of the resonant cavity can be precisely controlled by etching techniques.
3. The surface plasmon waveguide structure provided by the invention can adopt transparent materials with high refractive indexes such as diamond, silicon carbide, lithium niobate and the like as a substrate, and can effectively inhibit the generation of optical modes in the waveguide.
4. Since the metal cavity has stronger binding power to the electromagnetic field than the dielectric cavity and the reflector of the metal cavity occupies smaller volume than the multilayer dielectric film or the photonic crystal reflector, the physical size of the laser can be further reduced by utilizing the metal cavity, and the laser based on the metal cavity can be well compatible with an electronic chip.
5. The invention provides an insulating medium layer with low refractive index between a metal film layer and a gain medium layer, which aims to better limit an electromagnetic field of a surface plasmon mode in a waveguide in the insulating medium layer, reduce loss of the surface plasmon mode in the metal film layer, and simultaneously avoid non-radiative recombination of photon-generated carriers generated by excited light in the gain medium layer and carriers in the metal film layer.
Drawings
FIG. 1 is a schematic (cross-sectional) schematic diagram of one embodiment of a metal cavity based surface plasmon laser of the present invention;
fig. 2 is an optical microscope image (top view) of one embodiment of a metal cavity based surface plasmon laser of the present invention. In the figure: 1 is a surface plasmon waveguide, 2 is an F-P metal cavity with the length of 12 mu m and the width of 4 mu m;
FIG. 3 is a scanning electron microscope SEM image of one embodiment of a surface plasmon waveguide of the present invention;
fig. 4 is an emission spectrum of a specific embodiment of the F-P metal cavity based surface plasmon laser of the present invention at different pump optical power densities.
Fig. 5 is a typical threshold diagram of one particular embodiment of the F-P metal cavity based surface plasmon laser of the present invention.
Detailed Description
The invention is further illustrated in the following, in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and detailed embodiments.
As shown in fig. 1 and 2, the surface plasmon laser based on the metal cavity of the present embodiment includes: a surface plasmon waveguide 1 and a metal cavity 2; wherein surface plasmon waveguide 1 further comprises high refractive index transparent substrate layer 11, metal thin film layer 12, insulating medium layer 13, gain medium layer 14, insulating medium layer 15, and metal thick film layer 16; the metal film layer 12 is plated on the transparent substrate layer 11, the insulating medium layer 13 is plated on the metal film layer 12, the gain medium layer 14 is a semiconductor nano-belt, and is tightly attached to the surface of the insulating medium layer 13 without gaps, the insulating medium layer 15 is plated on the gain medium layer 14, and the metal thick film layer 16 is plated on the insulating medium layer 15. The metal cavity 2 is composed of a vertical metal reflecting mirror, the top end of the metal reflecting mirror is connected with a metal thick film layer 16, the bottommost end of the metal reflecting mirror is positioned in the substrate layer 11, the distance between the bottommost end of the metal reflecting mirror and the junction of the substrate layer 11 and the metal thin film layer 12 is h, and in the experiment, h is approximately equal to 130nm.
Fig. 3 is a scanning electron microscope SEM image of a surface plasmon waveguide section of the present embodiment. The substrate layer 11 is monocrystalline silicon carbide (refractive index 2.62), thickness-330 μm, size 10mm×10mm; evaporating a silver film with the thickness of 18nm on a silicon carbide substrate by using an electron beam evaporation method to serve as a metal film layer 12; evaporating magnesium difluoride with the thickness of 6nm on the metal film layer by using an electron beam evaporation method as an insulating medium layer 13; the cadmium selenide single crystal nano-belt grown by the CVD method is used as a gain medium layer 14 to be placed on the insulating medium layer 13, and the thickness of the gain medium layer in the embodiment is 50-300 nm; evaporating magnesium difluoride with the thickness of 6nm on the gain medium layer by using an electron beam evaporation method to serve as an insulating medium layer 15; a silver film of 200nm thickness was vapor-deposited as a metal thick film layer 16 on the insulating dielectric layer 15 by electron beam evaporation.
The pumping light is focused by the objective lens and then enters the cadmium selenide nanoribbon in the metal cavity from one side of the silicon carbide substrate, the cadmium selenide nanoribbon is used as the gain medium layer 14, the electrons of the cadmium selenide nanoribbon absorb photons and then undergo energy level transition, then energy is transferred to surface plasmon modes of the interface between the metal thin film layer 12 and the gain medium layer 14 and the interface between the metal thick film layer 16 and the gain medium layer 14 in an energy resonance transfer mode, and when the power of the pumping light exceeds the lasing threshold of laser, the surface plasmon modes propagating in the waveguide finally generate surface plasmon laser through feedback amplification of the metal cavity. Since the bottom of the metal cavity 2 is a metal thick film layer 16, the generated surface plasmon laser can only exit from the transparent substrate layer 11 side.
FIG. 4 shows the emission spectra of a surface plasmon laser based on an F-P metal cavity of the present invention (F-P cavity size: 12 μm length. Times.4 μm width. Times.320 nm height) at different pump light powers measured from a silicon carbide substrate side, the left side of the figure being the peak power density of the pump light in GW/cm 2 . As can be seen from fig. 4, when the pump energy is low (I pump ≈0.43GW/cm 2 ) The emission spectrum is a broad fluorescence spectrum (lineWide-37 nm). When the pump light power is gradually increased to just exceed the laser threshold value (I pump ≈1.3GW/cm 2 ) Four distinct laser peaks appear spectrally, with peak wavelengths of 691.1, 695.5, 699.9, and 702.7nm, respectively. After the pump light power continues to increase (I pump ≈1.55GW/cm 2 And 1.84GW/cm 2 ) More laser peaks appear on the emission spectrum, and as the peak wavelength interval of the laser peaks is small, the laser peaks are connected together to form a continuous broad spectrum, and as the pump light power is further increased (I pump ≥2.2GW/cm 2 ) In turn, some new discrete laser peaks are formed on the right side of the laser spectrum. The Q value of the laser peak indicated by the arrow in the figure can reach 1170, which is the maximum Q value in the surface plasmon laser reported at present.
FIG. 5 is a graph showing the variation of the output intensity of the surface plasmon laser with the peak power density of the incident pump light measured at room temperature for one embodiment of the F-P metal cavity-based surface plasmon laser of the present invention (the size of the F-P cavity is 12 μm long. Times.4 μm wide. Times.320 nm high). The nonlinear response of the input-output light intensity marks the generation of surface plasmon laser, and the threshold of the corresponding surface plasmon laser is about 1.3GW/cm 2 This is a typical threshold for a surface plasmon laser operating at room temperature.
The foregoing description is only of the preferred embodiments of the present invention, and therefore, the technical scope of the present invention should not be limited thereby, and all equivalent changes and modifications that are made according to the technical spirit and the description of the present invention should be included in the scope of the present invention.
Claims (6)
1. A surface plasmon laser based on a metal cavity, which is characterized by comprising a surface plasmon waveguide and a metal cavity; the surface plasmon waveguide comprises a transparent substrate layer, a metal thin film layer, a first insulating medium layer, a gain medium layer, a second insulating medium layer and a metal thick film layer which are sequentially stacked; the metal cavity is embedded in the surface plasmon waveguide by using an etching technology and serves as a resonant cavity of the laser, consists of a vertical metal reflecting mirror and extends from the metal thick film layer to the transparent substrate layer.
2. The surface plasmon laser of claim 1 wherein the metal thick film layer, the metal thin film layer and the metal cavity are any one of gold, silver, aluminum, copper.
3. The surface plasmon laser of claim 1 wherein the insulating dielectric layer is one of magnesium difluoride, aluminum oxide, silicon dioxide, and lithium fluoride.
4. The surface plasmon laser of claim 1 wherein the insulating dielectric layer has a thickness of 5-50 nm.
5. The surface plasmon laser of claim 1 wherein the gain medium layer is one of a semiconductor nanoribbon, a semiconductor nanowire, a semiconductor quantum dot, or a medium doped with laser dye molecules fabricated from a light emitting semiconductor.
6. The surface plasmon laser of claim 1 wherein the metal cavity is one of a parallel planar cavity, a concave-convex cavity, a planar cavity, a circular cavity, and a polygonal cavity.
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CN108666865B (en) * | 2018-05-09 | 2020-10-02 | 华中科技大学 | Metal-semiconductor composite structure, SPPs excitation mode and preparation method |
CN108879322B (en) * | 2018-06-15 | 2023-05-09 | 华侨大学 | Semiconductor laser based on metal microcavity and manufacturing method thereof |
CN108963739B (en) * | 2018-08-01 | 2020-06-09 | 东南大学 | Wavelength-tunable dual-ring structure plasmon laser based on metamaterial antenna |
CN109687282B (en) * | 2019-02-11 | 2020-08-07 | 中国科学院微电子研究所 | Three-dimensional metamaterial surface plasmon laser |
CN112421377B (en) * | 2020-11-18 | 2021-09-28 | 广东鸿芯科技有限公司 | Anti-light-mixing semiconductor laser and preparation method thereof |
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CN114336280B (en) * | 2021-12-20 | 2024-03-12 | 华侨大学 | Metal cavity surface plasmon-based laser controllable output device and output method thereof |
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