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26 Jun 2002
A molecule commonly used in LED fabrication shows promise for making an organic diode laser that emits in the blue.
Scientists in Spain have found that an organic molecule commonly used in LED manufacture could offer a cheap and easy route to blue diode lasers.
María Díaz García and colleagues at the University of Alicante observed gain from the molecule, which is called TPD, when they pumped it with a 355 nm frequency-tripled Nd:YAG laser.
Although further development work is needed to see if the material can exhibit lasing properties, Garcia told Optics.org that it should be possible to electrically-pump TPD as it is a semiconductor.
"TPD is a very good candidate for making blue-emitting diode lasers," said Garcia. She added that while emission is centred around 420 nm, this could be adapted easily by subtly altering the chemistry of the molecule.
TPD is used as a hole-transporting layer in LEDs, and so it is already widely available. The film that showed gain was made by a simple spin-coating technique, which would be far cheaper than epitaxial deposition techniques used to make inorganic diode lasers.
Follow-up work is currently centered on making TPD lase by placing it inside a cavity. García is also seeing if the pump laser can be replaced by diodes or a lamp, and investigating the possibility of electrical pumping.
Author
Michael Hatcher is technology editor of Opto and Laser Europe magazine.
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