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Science 21 January 2000:
Vol. 287. no. 5452, pp. 465 - 467
DOI: 10.1126/science.287.5452.465
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Reports

Mirrorless Lasing from Mesostructured Waveguides Patterned by Soft Lithography

Peidong Yang, 1* † Gernot Wirnsberger, 1* Howard C. Huang, 12 Steven R. Cordero, 1 Michael D. McGehee, 13 Brian Scott, 1 Tao Deng, 4 George M. Whitesides, 4 Bradley F. Chmelka, 2 Steven K. Buratto, 1 Galen D. Stucky 13ddagger

Mesostructured silica waveguide arrays were fabricated with a combination of acidic sol-gel block copolymer templating chemistry and soft lithography. Waveguiding was enabled by the use of a low-refractive index (1.15) mesoporous silica thin film support. When the mesostructure was doped with the laser dye rhodamine 6G, amplified spontaneous emission was observed with a low pumping threshold of 10 kilowatts per square centimeter, attributed to the mesostructure's ability to prevent aggregation of the dye molecules even at relatively high loadings within the organized high-surface area mesochannels of the waveguides. These highly processible, self-assembling mesostructured host media and claddings may have potential for the fabrication of integrated optical circuits.

1 Department of Chemistry,
2 Department of Chemical Engineering,
3 Department of Materials, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA.
4 Department of Chemistry, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
*   These authors contributed equally to this work.

ddagger    To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: stucky{at}chem.ucsb.edu

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