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Capocefalo A, Quintiero E, Conti C, Ghofraniha N, Viola I. Droplet Lasers for Smart Photonic Labels. ACS APPLIED MATERIALS & INTERFACES 2021; 13:51485-51494. [PMID: 34666483 PMCID: PMC9296018 DOI: 10.1021/acsami.1c14972] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/30/2023]
Abstract
Microscopic lasers represent a promising tool for the development of cutting-edge photonic devices thanks to their ability to enhance light-matter interaction at the microscale. In this work, we realize liquid microlasers with tunable emission by exploiting the self-formation of three-dimensional liquid droplets into a polymeric matrix driven by viscoelastic dewetting. We design a flexible device to be used as a smart photonic label which is detachable and reusable on various types of substrates such as paper or fabric. The innovative lasing emission mechanism proposed here is based on whispering gallery mode emission coupled to random lasing, the latter prompted by the inclusion of dielectric compounds into the active gain medium. The wide possibility of modulating the emission wavelength of the microlasers by acting on different parameters, such as the cavity size, type and volume fraction of the dielectrics, and gain medium, offers a multitude of spectroscopic encoding schemes for the realization of photonic barcodes and labels to be employed in anticounterfeiting applications and multiplexed bioassays.
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Affiliation(s)
- A. Capocefalo
- CNR
ISC, Istituto dei Sistemi Complessi, c/o Università Sapienza, Piazzale Aldo Moro 5, 00185 Roma, Italy
| | - E. Quintiero
- CNR
NANOTEC, Istituto di Nanotecnologia, c/o Università Sapienza, Piazzale Aldo Moro 5, 00185 Roma, Italy
| | - C. Conti
- CNR
ISC, Istituto dei Sistemi Complessi, c/o Università Sapienza, Piazzale Aldo Moro 5, 00185 Roma, Italy
| | - N. Ghofraniha
- CNR
ISC, Istituto dei Sistemi Complessi, c/o Università Sapienza, Piazzale Aldo Moro 5, 00185 Roma, Italy
| | - I. Viola
- CNR
NANOTEC, Istituto di Nanotecnologia, c/o Università Sapienza, Piazzale Aldo Moro 5, 00185 Roma, Italy
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Khater A, Abdelrehim O, Mohammadi M, Mohamad A, Sanati-Nezhad A. Thermal droplet microfluidics: From biology to cooling technology. Trends Analyt Chem 2021. [DOI: 10.1016/j.trac.2021.116234] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/28/2022]
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Maskoun J, Gheshlaghi N, Isik F, Delikanli S, Erdem O, Erdem EY, Demir HV. Optical Microfluidic Waveguides and Solution Lasers of Colloidal Semiconductor Quantum Wells. ADVANCED MATERIALS (DEERFIELD BEACH, FLA.) 2021; 33:e2007131. [PMID: 33491818 DOI: 10.1002/adma.202007131] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/19/2020] [Revised: 12/10/2020] [Indexed: 06/12/2023]
Abstract
The realization of high-quality lasers in microfluidic devices is crucial for numerous applications, including biological and chemical sensors and flow cytometry, and the development of advanced lab-on-chip (LOC) devices. Herein, an ultralow-threshold microfluidic single-mode laser is proposed and demonstrated using an on-chip cavity. CdSe/CdS@Cdx Zn1- x S core/crown@gradient-alloyed shell colloidal semiconductor quantum wells (CQWs) dispersed in toluene are employed in the cavity created inside a poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) microfluidic device using SiO2 -protected Ag mirrors to achieve in-solution lasing. Lasing from such a microfluidic device having CQWs solution as a microfluidic gain medium is shown for the first time with a record-low optical gain threshold of 17.1 µJ cm- ² and lasing threshold of 68.4 µJ cm- ² among all solution-based lasing demonstrations. In addition, air-stable SiO2 protected Ag films are used and designed to form highly tunable and reflective mirrors required to attain a high-quality Fabry-Pérot cavity. These realized record-low thresholds emanate from the high-quality on-chip cavity together with the core/crown@gradient-alloyed shell CQWs having giant gain cross-section and slow Auger rates. This microfabricated CQW laser provides a compact and inexpensive coherent light source for microfluidics and integrated optics covering the visible spectral region.
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Affiliation(s)
- Joudi Maskoun
- UNAM Institute of Materials Science and Nanotechnology, Bilkent University, Ankara, 06800, Turkey
| | - Negar Gheshlaghi
- UNAM Institute of Materials Science and Nanotechnology, Bilkent University, Ankara, 06800, Turkey
| | - Furkan Isik
- UNAM Institute of Materials Science and Nanotechnology, Bilkent University, Ankara, 06800, Turkey
| | - Savas Delikanli
- UNAM Institute of Materials Science and Nanotechnology, Bilkent University, Ankara, 06800, Turkey
- LUMINOUS! Center of Excellence for Semiconductor Lighting and Displays, School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 50 Nanyang Avenue, Singapore, 639798, Singapore
- Division of Physics and Applied Physics, School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, 21 Nanyang Link, Singapore, 639798, Singapore
| | - Onur Erdem
- UNAM Institute of Materials Science and Nanotechnology, Bilkent University, Ankara, 06800, Turkey
- Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Department of Physics, Bilkent University, Ankara, 06800, Turkey
| | - Emine Yegan Erdem
- UNAM Institute of Materials Science and Nanotechnology, Bilkent University, Ankara, 06800, Turkey
- Department of Mechanical Engineering, Bilkent University, Ankara, 06800, Turkey
| | - Hilmi Volkan Demir
- UNAM Institute of Materials Science and Nanotechnology, Bilkent University, Ankara, 06800, Turkey
- LUMINOUS! Center of Excellence for Semiconductor Lighting and Displays, School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 50 Nanyang Avenue, Singapore, 639798, Singapore
- Division of Physics and Applied Physics, School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, 21 Nanyang Link, Singapore, 639798, Singapore
- Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Department of Physics, Bilkent University, Ankara, 06800, Turkey
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Zhang H, Palit P, Liu Y, Vaziri S, Sun Y. Reconfigurable Integrated Optofluidic Droplet Laser Arrays. ACS APPLIED MATERIALS & INTERFACES 2020; 12:26936-26942. [PMID: 32437123 DOI: 10.1021/acsami.0c05967] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/11/2023]
Abstract
Optofluidic lasers are an emerging technology for the development of miniaturized light sources and biological and chemical sensors. However, most optofluidic lasers demonstrated to date are operated at the single optical cavity level, which limits their applications in high-throughput biochemical sensing, high-speed wavelength switching, and on-chip spectroscopic analysis. Here, we demonstrated an optofluidic droplet laser array on a silicon chip with integrated microfluidics, in which four individual droplet optical cavities are generated and controlled by a 2 × 2 nozzle array. Arrays of droplets with a diameter ranging from 115 to 475 μm can be generated, removed, and regenerated on demand. The lasing threshold of the droplet laser array is in the range of 0.63-2.02 μJ/mm2. An image-based lasing threshold analysis method is developed, which enables simultaneous lasing threshold measurement for all laser units within the laser array using a low-cost camera. Compared to the conventional spectrum-based threshold analysis method, the lasing threshold obtained from the image-based method showed consistent results. Our droplet laser array is a promising technology in the development of cost-effective and integrated coherent light source on a chip for point-of-care applications.
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Affiliation(s)
- Han Zhang
- Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, Texas 76019, United States
| | - Prithviraj Palit
- Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, Texas 76019, United States
| | - Yonghao Liu
- Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, Texas 76019, United States
| | - Seyedmohsen Vaziri
- Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, Texas 76019, United States
| | - Yuze Sun
- Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, Texas 76019, United States
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Richter D, Marinčič M, Humar M. Optical-resonance-assisted generation of super monodisperse microdroplets and microbeads with nanometer precision. LAB ON A CHIP 2020; 20:734-740. [PMID: 31845692 DOI: 10.1039/c9lc01034c] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/10/2023]
Abstract
Droplets with predefined sizes have been controllably produced at the tip of a micro-capillary immersed in an external fluid while tracking the high Q-factor whispering gallery modes (WGM). The modes were fitted to a model to give precise real-time size measurement, which was used as a feedback to control the pressure in the capillary and the release of the droplet from the capillary when it reached the target size. In this way a dispersion of highly monodisperse droplets anywhere in the size range from 5 μm to 50 μm were produced. To fabricate solid beads, the droplets were made from a liquid photopolymer and were later polymerized with UV light. The polymerized beads showed long term stability. The diameter of the generated oil droplets and polymerized microbeads could be reproduced with a standard deviation of 1.1 nm and 20 nm, respectively. Overall, the demonstrated method improves the size precision by three and two orders of magnitude for microdroplets and microbeads, respectively, compared to standard production methods such as reported in microfluidics. Encoding of short words and numbers has been demonstrated by producing three beads with predefined sizes. The stored information has been read from the emitted spectrum.
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Affiliation(s)
- Dmitry Richter
- Center for Systems Biology and Wellman Center for Photomedicine, Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA 02114, USA and Department of Condensed Matter Physics, J. Stefan Institute, Jamova 39, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia.
| | - MatevŽ Marinčič
- Department of Condensed Matter Physics, J. Stefan Institute, Jamova 39, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia. and Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, University of Ljubljana, Jadranska 19, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
| | - MatjaŽ Humar
- Department of Condensed Matter Physics, J. Stefan Institute, Jamova 39, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia. and Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, University of Ljubljana, Jadranska 19, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
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Yan M, Zhang X, Wang J, Hou F, Yang L, Sun W, Yang Y, Wang T. Effects of end surface and angle coupling on mode splitting and suppression in a cylindrical microcavity. APPLIED OPTICS 2019; 58:1752-1756. [PMID: 30874212 DOI: 10.1364/ao.58.001752] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/13/2018] [Accepted: 01/28/2019] [Indexed: 06/09/2023]
Abstract
A cylindrical microcavity conventionally has the characteristics of simple fabrication and high Q factor, where the rich physics of mode splitting and suppression caused by mode excitation, coupling, and interference have been realized for highly sensitive sensing and cavity quantum electrodynamics. In this paper, we show experimentally and theoretically a simple method to tailor these two mechanisms via near-end surface and angle coupling in a single-mode fiber cylindrical microcavity. Mode splitting can be enhanced due to the interference between localized and axial modes as the effect of near-end surface coupling, validated by the coupled-mode model. Besides, we also demonstrate that the coupling angle between the fiber taper and cylindrical microcavity can efficiently affect the mode suppression in the transmission spectrum. Such a device has a simple structure, simple fabrication process, and simple mechanism to tailor the mode splitting and suppression for applications in cavity quantum electrodynamics, sensitive sensing, and other topics of photonics.
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