UV random laser emission from flexible ZnO-Ag-enriched electrospun cellulose acetate fiber matrix

Manoel L Da Silva-Neto,Leonardo De Souza Menezes,Christian T Dominguez,Anderson S L Gomes,Nikifor Rakov,Raquel E M Lins,Helinando P De Oliveira,Mário C A De Oliveira,Cid B De Araújo

doi:10.1038/s41598-019-48056-w

Manoel L Da Silva-Neto, Leonardo De Souza Menezes + Show 7 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-48056-w

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Abstract

We report an alternative random laser (RL) architecture based on a flexible and ZnO-enriched cellulose acetate (CA) fiber matrix prepared by electrospinning. The electrospun fibers, mechanically reinforced by polyethylene oxide and impregnated with zinc oxide powder, were applied as an adsorbent surface to incorporate plasmonic centers (silver nanoprisms). The resulting structures – prepared in the absence (CA-ZnO) and in the presence of silver nanoparticles (CA-ZnO-Ag) - were developed to support light excitation, guiding and scattering prototypes of a RL. Both materials were excited by a pulsed (5 Hz, 5 ns) source at 355 nm and their fluorescence emission monitored at 387 nm. The results suggest that the addition of silver nanoprisms to the ZnO- enriched fiber matrix allows large improvement of the RL performance due to the plasmon resonance of the silver nanoprisms, with ~80% reduction in threshold energy. Besides the intensity and spectral analysis, the RL characterization included its spectral and intensity angular dependences. Bending the flexible RL did not affect the spectral characteristics of the device. No degradation was observed in the random laser emission for more than 10,000 shots of the pump laser.

Highlights

Burgeoning growth of attention has been devoted to the development of flexible photonic systems[1] due to their potential applications as light emitting devices, foldable displays and wearable sensors[2,3]
The morphology and structure of electrospun fibers were evaluated by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and Fourier-Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) spectra
zinc oxide (ZnO) nanoparticles incorporated in cellulose acetate fiber matrix were prepared by electrospinning, and the system was characterized as a random laser (RL) pumped by nanosecond laser pulses

Summary

Introduction

Burgeoning growth of attention has been devoted to the development of flexible photonic systems[1] due to their potential applications as light emitting devices, foldable displays and wearable sensors[2,3]. Among the optical sources of interest described here, flexible random lasers (RLs) have been proposed for such applications[6,7,8,9,10,11]. Random lasing action arising from electrospun nanofibers, which act as the scatterers, doped with appropriate gain medium, has been recently studied as reported in refs[30,31,32,33,34] introducing a new class of flexible RLs. Cellulose – the most reported and common biopolymer in the world and the widely used in the ester form (in the present case cellulose acetate - CA)[35,36] are important and relevant building blocks with a plenty of green credentials for different applications. We fabricated and exploited the use of electrospun fibers of cellulose acetate modified with ZnO and decorated with silver nanoparticles[39] to produce stable UV RL emission

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