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Nano Research 2017, 10(6): 1996-2004 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-016-1387-0
Research Article | Issue | Published: 27 February 2017

Synergistic graphene/aluminum surface plasmon coupling for zinc oxide lasing improvement

Show Author's Information Qiuxiang Zhu1,2,  Feifei Qin1,  Junfeng Lu1,  Zhu Zhu1,  Haiyan Nan3,  Zengliang Shi1,  Zhenhua Ni3,  Chunxiang Xu1( )
State Key Laboratory of BioelectronicsSchool of Biological Science & Medical EngineeringSoutheast UniversityNanjing210096China
College of Communication and Electronic EngineeringHunan City UniversityYiyang413000China
Department of PhysicsSoutheast UniversityNanjing210096China
Keywords:
graphene, ZnO microrod, surface plasmons, Al nanoparticles, energy coupling
Cite this article:
Zhu Q, Qin F, Lu J, et al. Synergistic graphene/aluminum surface plasmon coupling for zinc oxide lasing improvement. Nano Research, 2017, 10(6): 1996-2004. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-016-1387-0
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Abstract Full text About this article

Collective oscillations of free electrons generate plasmons on the surface of a material. A whispering-gallery microcavity effectively confines the light field on its surface based on the total reflection from its internal wall. When these two kinds of electromagnetic waves meet each other, the stimulated emissions from an individual ZnO microrod were enhanced more than 50-fold and the threshold was reduced after the whispering-gallery microcavity was coated with a monolayer of graphene and Al nanoparticles. The improvement of the lasing performance was attributed to the synergistic energy coupling of the graphene/Al surface plasmons with ZnO excitons. The lasing characteristics and the coupling mechanism were investigated systematically.


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About this article

Synergistic graphene/aluminum surface plasmon coupling for zinc oxide lasing improvement

Show Author's information Qiuxiang Zhu1,2, Feifei Qin1, Junfeng Lu1, Zhu Zhu1, Haiyan Nan3, Zengliang Shi1, Zhenhua Ni3, Chunxiang Xu1( )
State Key Laboratory of BioelectronicsSchool of Biological Science & Medical EngineeringSoutheast UniversityNanjing210096China
College of Communication and Electronic EngineeringHunan City UniversityYiyang413000China
Department of PhysicsSoutheast UniversityNanjing210096China

Abstract

Collective oscillations of free electrons generate plasmons on the surface of a material. A whispering-gallery microcavity effectively confines the light field on its surface based on the total reflection from its internal wall. When these two kinds of electromagnetic waves meet each other, the stimulated emissions from an individual ZnO microrod were enhanced more than 50-fold and the threshold was reduced after the whispering-gallery microcavity was coated with a monolayer of graphene and Al nanoparticles. The improvement of the lasing performance was attributed to the synergistic energy coupling of the graphene/Al surface plasmons with ZnO excitons. The lasing characteristics and the coupling mechanism were investigated systematically.

Keywords: graphene, ZnO microrod, surface plasmons, Al nanoparticles, energy coupling

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Publication history
Copyright
Acknowledgements

Publication history

Received: 26 July 2016
Revised: 21 November 2016
Accepted: 26 November 2016
Published: 27 February 2017
Issue date: June 2017

Copyright

© Tsinghua University Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2016

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Prof. Zhenhua Ni and Dr. Haiyan Nan from Department of Physics, Southeast University for their warm help in the material synthesis. This work was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (No. 2013CB932903), National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 61475035 and 61275054), the Opened Fund of the State Key Laboratory on Integrated Optoelectronics (No. 2011KFJ004), the General Project of Education Department of Hunan Province (No. 15C0251), and Collaborative Innovation Center of Suzhou Nano Science and Technology.

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