Femtosecond laser 3D printing temperature sensitive microsphere lasers

Abstract

The whispering gallery mode (WGM) microcavity has been widely used for sensing and detection because of its high quality factor, small mode size, simple and diverse manufacturing process, and high sensitivity to the surrounding environment. Microsphere cavityand microdisk cavity are typical whispering gallery mode microcavities. However, the real controllable size of the on-chip three-dimensional microsphere cavity has rarely been reported because it is difficult to prepare by photolithography. At the same time, most of the current microsphere cavity are prepared by hot melting, which have the poor ability to control the size. In this article, we have mainly demonstrated the fabrication of a dye-doped polymer whispering gallery mode microsphere by femtosecond laser two-photon polymerization, which shows good surface smoothness with a fabrication spatial resolution beyond the diffraction limit. The microsphere cavity consists with commercial photoresist SU-8 as the cavity material and Rhodamine B as the gain medium. With the 532 nm pump, the RhB-doped SU-8 can emit fluorescence in the spectral range of 600–700 nm, and thus resonant whispering gallery laser modes in this spectral region can be eventually formed in the microsphere cavities. The microcavity shows excellent lasing performance with a quality factor of ~2000. Due to the special luminescence mechanism of organic dyes, the fluorescence spectrum of the dye drifts with the change of ambient temperature, and it will form a new resonance excitation with the eigenmode of the cavity. Within a certain temperature range (20 ℃－35 ℃), the wavelength of the main lasing peak is linearly related to temperature. The results shows that the organic dye doped micro-resonator has a unique laser mechanism which can be used to construct a new type of microlaser. Moreover, the tunable microsphere laser can be used as a temperature sensor after further optimized. We believe our work will provide a positive inspiration for the rational design of miniaturized lasers with ideal performance.