Emission peak shifted incoherent random laser through the combined effects of coupling of surface plasmons in a triangular shaped silver nanostructure, microbubbles, and the waveguiding mechanism

Abstract

The random laser (RL) is now becoming an essential tool for various photonics applications, and a plethora of research advancements in RL coupled with developments in the field of techniques of syntheses of various nanostructured materials is taking place. But the realization of tuning the peak emission wavelength of RL is still very challenging. However, in this report we have demonstrated an emission peak shifted tunable low threshold incoherent RL in the visible region in a gain medium of a commercially available dye laser material and by employing the rarely used scatterer materials of triangular silver nanoparticles (TSN), microbubbles, and the waveguiding mechanism. The scattering properties of trapped microbubbles, along with the localized surface plasmon resonance property of TSN of appropriate concentration within waveguided thin films composed of glass substrates, have been methodically investigated to demonstrate the reduction in lasing threshold and tunability in the peak emission wavelength. A two-fold reduction in RL threshold by addition of TSN in the disordered system, along with a considerable narrowing down of the emission spectra to a few nanometers, are obtained. Furthermore, the peak emission wavelength shift of 6 nm is reported by suitably changing the system configuration by the addition of an optimum concentration of TSN along with trapped microbubbles. The as-developed system shows high-quality laser performance with the maximum value of η=0.64, a quantity describing the ratio of the number of stimulated radiative photons within RL and the total number of emissive photons. We propose that the total internal reflections from the microbubble surface, along with plasmonic enhancement and scattering from the TSN, mediate the waveguided RL to achieve the low threshold. Therefore, this report is an early step towards demonstrating efficient RL in a ternary scattering system. Many more avenues for investigating this developing research issue may be helpful for the future development of affordable and robust optoelectronic devices.