There is strong interest in minimizing the volume of lasers to enable ultracompact, low-power, coherent light sources. Nanowires represent an ideal candidate for such nanolasers as stand-alone optical cavities and gain media, and optically pumped nanowire lasing has been demonstrated in several semiconductor systems. Electrically injected nanowire lasers are needed to realize actual working devices but have been elusive due to limitations of current methods to address the requirement for nanowire device heterostructures with high material quality, controlled doping and geometry, low optical loss, and efficient carrier injection. In this project we proposed to demonstrate electrically injected single nanowire lasers emitting in the important UV to visible wavelengths. Our approach to simultaneously address these challenges is based on high quality III-nitride nanowire device heterostructures with precisely controlled geometries and strong gain and mode confinement to minimize lasing thresholds, enabled by a unique top-down nanowire fabrication technique.
Ammonia-based molecular beam epitaxy (NH3-MBE) was used to grow catalyst-assisted GaN nanowires on (11¯02) r-plane sapphire substrates. Dislocation free [112¯0] oriented nanowires are formed with pentagon shape cross-section, instead of the usual triangular shape facet configuration. Specifically, the cross-section is the result of the additional two nonpolar {101¯0} side facets, which appear due to a decrease in relative growth rate of the {101¯0} facets to the {101¯1} and {101¯1} facets under the growth regime in NH3-MBE. Compared to GaN nanowires grown by Ni-catalyzed metal-organic chemical vapor deposition, the NH3-MBE grown GaN nanowires show more than an order of magnitude increase in band-edge to yellow luminescence intensity ratio, as measured by cathodoluminescence, indicating improved microstructural and optical properties.
We report continuous, dynamic, reversible, and widely tunable lasing from 367 to 337 nm from single GaN nanowires (NWs) by applying hydrostatic pressure up to ∼7 GPa. The GaN NW lasers, with heights of 4-5 μm and diameters ∼140 nm, are fabricated using a lithographically defined two-step top-down technique. The wavelength tuning is caused by an increasing Γ direct bandgap of GaN with increasing pressure and is precisely controllable to subnanometer resolution. The observed pressure coefficients of the NWs are ∼40% larger compared with GaN microstructures fabricated from the same material or from reported bulk GaN values, revealing a nanoscale-related effect that significantly enhances the tuning range using this approach. This approach can be generally applied to other semiconductor NW lasers to potentially achieve full spectral coverage from the UV to IR.
Lasing is demonstrated from gallium nitride nanotubes fabricated using a two-step top-down technique. By optically pumping, we observed characteristics of lasing: a clear threshold, a narrow spectral, and guided emission from the nanotubes. In addition, annular lasing emission from the GaN nanotube is also observed, indicating that cross-sectional shape control can be employed to manipulate the properties of nanolasers. The nanotube lasers could be of interest for optical nanofluidic applications or application benefitting from a hollow beam shape.