Record Performance of Electrical Injection Sub-wavelength Metallic-Cavity Semiconductor Lasers at Room Temperature

摘要

Metallic-Cavity lasers or plasmonic nanolasers of sub-wavelength sizes haveattracted great attentions in recent years, with the ultimate goal of achievingcontinuous wave (CW), room temperature (RT) operation under electricalinjection. Despite great efforts, a conclusive and convincing demonstration ofthis goal has proven challenging. By overcoming several fabrication challengesimposed by the stringent requirement of such small scale devices, we werefinally able to achieve this ultimate goal. Our metallic nanolaser with acavity volume of 0.67{\lambda}3 ({\lambda}=1591 nm) shows a linewidth of 0.5 nmat RT, which corresponds to a Q-value of 3182 compared to 235 of the cavity Q,the highest Q under lasing condition for RT CW operation of any sub-wavelengthlaser. Such record performance provides convincing evidences of the feasibilityof RT CW metallic nanolasers, thus opening a wide range of practicalpossibilities of novel nanophotonic devices based on metal-semiconductorstructures.