New perylene-doped polymeric thin films for efficient and long-lasting lasers

Abstract

We establish an efficient strategy to optimize the performance of dye-doped host materials consisting of analyzing in a systematic way the dependence of their Amplified Spontaneous Emission (ASE) efficiency and photostability on the composition and structure of the matrices, selected to specifically avoid the thermal and/or chemical (photooxidation) processes, main mechanisms of dye photodegradation. For this study, a number of experimental polyimides have been chosen as a host matrix and their behavior has been compared with that of poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA). We correlate the optical properties with the oxygen permeation and thermal properties of the different polymeric hosts doped with perylene dyes to deepen the understanding of the photodegradation mechanism predominant in these dyes and to minimize its influence. We demonstrate high efficiency and photostable ASE from waveguides based on polymeric materials doped with Perylene Orange (PO), Perylene Red (PR), and mixtures of both. This enhancement in the optical properties allows reaching high gain and long-lasting distributed feedback (DFB) laser emission based on PO doped polymer matrices, even when operating in an unoptimised resonator.