Monolithic on-chip waveguide-integrated plasmonic nanolaser

2019 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 18K13799
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Early-Career Scientists
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Review Section: Basic Section 21060:Electron device and electronic equipment-related
• Research Institution: The University of Tokyo
• Principal Investigator: Ho Ya-Lun 東京大学, 大学院工学系研究科(工学部), 助教 (20815386)
• Project Period (FY): 2018-04-01 – 2020-03-31
• Keywords: Plasmonics / Nanolaser / Nanofabrication / プラズモニクス / ナノレーザー / ナノ加工

Outline of Final Research Achievements

To achieve nanometer-scale light sources, plasmonic nanowire lasers have been prepared in recent years. However, plasmonic nanowire lasers have critical issues on their practicability. The specialized material grown techniques for nanowires, that is, the high-quality lasing gain media, are required, and also these nanowire lasers cannot be integrated with optical circuits on a chip without the transfer process and ultra-fine alignment. A promising way to realize the non-transfer nanolaser is to fabricate them by top-down process directly on the chip with the well-defined geometry and good alignment. In this project, we demonstrated a monolithically fabricated plasmonic nanolaser compatible with the fabrication requirements of on-chip circuits. The nanolaser is designed with a plasmonic metal layer on the top of the laser cavity, providing highly efficient energy transfer between photons, excitons, and plasmons, and achieving UV lasing up to 330 K with a low lasing threshold.

Free Research Field

ナノフォトニクス

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

This on-chip plasmonic nanolaser is based on the well-established top-down fabrication technique for semiconductor industry. It opens a new window for next-generation photonic integrated circuits as ultra-small, ultra-fast, low-energy consumption, and high-data-capacity devices at a nanometer scale.