Five-Fold Reduction of Lasing Threshold near the First $\Gamma L$-Pseudogap of ZnO Inverse Opals

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that tuning the first b3b3;L-pseudogap in ZnO inverse opal photonic crystals significantly reduces the lasing threshold at room temperature, highlighting the importance of photonic structure design for efficient UV lasers.

Contribution

It introduces a method to reduce lasing threshold by tuning photonic pseudogaps to the gain spectrum in ZnO inverse opals, achieving a five-fold decrease.

Findings

Five-fold reduction in lasing threshold near the b3b3;L-pseudogap.

Observation of frequency shift of lasing modes.

Enhanced light confinement due to pseudogap tuning.

Abstract

We report room temperature lasing in ZnO inverse opal photonic crystals in the near-ultraviolet (UV) frequency. We observe random lasing due to disorder in the structures when the photonic pseudogaps are located away from the ZnO gain spectrum. Tuning the first $\Gamma L$-pseudogap to the gain peak leads to a five-fold reduction in lasing threshold and frequency shift of lasing modes due to the enhanced confinement of light.