Abstract
Abstract Semiconductor nanowires (NW) hold great promise for micro/nanolasers owing to their naturally formed resonant microcavity, tightly confined electromagnetic field, and outstanding capability of integration with planar waveguide for on-chip optoelectronic applications. However, constrained by the optical diffraction limit, the dimension of semiconductor lasers cannot be smaller than half the optical wavelength in free space, typically several hundreds of nanometers. Semiconductor NW plasmonic lasers provide a solution to break this limitation and realize deep sub-wavelength light sources. In this review, we summarize the advances of semiconductor NW plasmonic lasers since their first demonstration in 2009. First of all, we briefly look into the fabrication and physical/chemical properties of semiconductor NWs. Next, we discuss the fundamentals of surface plasmons as well as the recent progress in semiconductor NW plasmonic lasers from the aspects of multicolor realization, threshold reduction, ultrafast modulation, and electrically driven operations, along with their applications in sensing and integrated optics. Finally, we provide insights into bright perspectives and remaining challenges.
Highlights
Rapid development of semiconductor lasers has significantly expanded frontier research on semiconductor photonics from fundamental sciences to industrial technologies, in which device miniaturization has been a long-standing and continuous pursuit
We summarize the advances of semiconductor NW plasmonic lasers since their first demonstration in 2009
The physical dimension of the plasmonic cavity can be compressed to the nanometer scale, enabling the simultaneous amplification of photons and surface plasmons (SPs) in analogy with the photonic lasing from pure dielectric materials [19,20,21]
Summary
Rapid development of semiconductor lasers has significantly expanded frontier research on semiconductor photonics from fundamental sciences to industrial technologies, in which device miniaturization has been a long-standing and continuous pursuit. From the creation of edge-emitting lasers [1], vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers [2,3,4], microdisk lasers [5,6,7], and photonic crystal lasers [8,9,10] to the discovery of nanowire (NW) lasers [11,12,13], the volume of semiconductor lasers has gradually reduced, which is still constrained by the diffraction limit and cannot be lower than half the optical wavelength (λ), typically several hundred nanometers This size is an order of magnitude larger than the feature size of modern transistors, which would cause integration mismatch and serious energy dissipation, and limit practical applications of micro/nanolasers [14]. One dimensionality, NWs are of fundamental interest in size and surface effects and hold great potential for photonic and optoelectronic devices [65,66,67,68]
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