Mechanical scanning probe lithography of perovskites for fabrication of high-Q planar polaritonic cavities

TL;DR

This paper introduces a low-cost, room-temperature method using mechanical scanning probe lithography to fabricate high-quality 2D perovskite-based polaritonic cavities, enabling advanced on-chip optical devices.

Contribution

It demonstrates for the first time the use of mechanical lithography for creating perovskite polaritonic systems with tunable properties at room temperature.

Findings

Achieved control over exciton-polariton dispersion and losses.

Demonstrated high exciton binding energy exceeding 200 meV.

Enabled fabrication of high-Q photonic cavities supporting strong light-matter coupling.

Abstract

Exciton-polaritons are unique quasiparticles with hybrid properties of an exciton and a photon, opening ways to realize ultrafast strongly nonlinear systems and inversion-free lasers based on Bose-Einstein polariton condensation. However, the real-world applications of the polariton systems are still limited due to the temperature operation and costly fabrication techniques for both exciton materials and photon cavities. 2D perovskites represent one of the most prospective platforms for the realization of strong light-matter coupling since they possess room-temperature exciton states with large oscillator strength and can simultaneously provide planar photon cavities with high field localization due to the huge refractive index of the material. In this work, we demonstrate for the first time the mechanical scanning probe lithography method for the realization of low-cost room-temperature exciton-polariton systems based on the 2D perovskite (PEA)$_2$PbI$_4$ with exciton binding energy exceeding 200 meV. Precisely controlling the lithography parameters, we broadly adjust the exciton-polariton dispersion and radiative losses of polaritonic modes in the range of 0.1 to 0.2 of total optical losses. Our findings represent a versatile approach to the fabrication of planar high-quality perovskite-based photonic cavities supporting the strong light-matter coupling regime for the development of on-chip all-optical active and nonlinear polaritonic devices.