Carbon-bridged oligo(p-phenylenevinylene)s for photostable and broadly tunable, solution-processable thin film organic lasers

Abstract

Thin film organic lasers represent a new generation of inexpensive, mechanically flexible devices for spectroscopy, optical communications and sensing. For this purpose, it is desired to develop highly efficient, stable, wavelength-tunable and solution-processable organic laser materials. Here we report that carbon-bridged oligo(p-phenylenevinylene)s serve as optimal materials combining all these properties simultaneously at the level required for applications by demonstrating amplified spontaneous emission and distributed feedback laser devices. A series of six compounds, with the repeating unit from 1 to 6, doped into polystyrene films undergo amplified spontaneous emission from 385 to 585 nm with remarkably low threshold and high net gain coefficients, as well as high photostability. The fabricated lasers show narrow linewidth (<0.13 nm) single mode emission at very low thresholds (0.7 kW cm−2), long operational lifetimes (>105 pump pulses for oligomers with three to six repeating units) and wavelength tunability across the visible spectrum (408–591 nm).