Colloidal Crystal Lasers from Monodisperse Conjugated Polymer Particles via Bottom-Up Coassembly in a Sol-Gel Matrix

The potential of colloidal crystals for applications in optics and photonics has been recognized since the description of spontaneous self-assembly of monodisperse colloids into periodic opaline geometries. Provided with a laser gain medium, these direct assemblies generate optical feedback and have prospective use as lasers or frequency converters; however, problems associated with the colloidal crystal integrity and low loading fractions of the gain medium in the self-assembled resonator structure have prevented their realization to date. Here, we circumvent these problems by synthesizing monodisperse conjugated polymer colloids, which consist entirely of gain medium. We coassemble these colloids together with a sol-gel precursor to achieve encapsulated photonic crystals, which can be applied via inkjet printing. These conjugated polymer photonic crystals exhibit single line laser emission upon optical pumping. This technique circumvents time-consuming micro- and nanofabrication steps as well as error-prone backfilling and etching procedures, providing an effortless way to generate laser geometries.