Mirrorless Cholesteric Lasers Using ESIPT-Based AIE Dyes via a Gain-Structure Decoupling Strategy

Area of Science:

• Photonics and Laser Technology
• Materials Science
• Supramolecular Chemistry

Background:

• Traditional dye-doped cholesteric liquid crystal (CLC) lasers suffer from concentration quenching and structural disruption at high dye concentrations.
• Developing efficient, mirrorless laser systems requires overcoming these limitations for enhanced optical gain and stability.

Purpose of the Study:

• To engineer a high-efficiency, mirrorless laser system utilizing aggregation-induced emission (AIE) dyes and CLC photonic structures.
• To implement a gain-structure decoupling strategy to enhance dye loading and optical gain.

Main Methods:

• Fabrication of nanoporous cholesteric polymer scaffolds using photopolymerization-induced phase separation.
• Selective removal of nonreactive mesogens to create porous templates.
• Infiltration of these scaffolds with an excited-state intramolecular proton transfer-type AIE dye.

Main Results:

• Achieved high dye uptake in porous CLC scaffolds without compromising photonic order, leading to enhanced optical gain.
• Demonstrated significantly improved output intensity and reduced lasing threshold in post-infiltrated architectures compared to directly doped systems.
• The decoupled system effectively mitigated concentration quenching and structural disruption.

Conclusions:

• The gain-structure decoupling strategy using AIE dye-infiltrated CLC photonic structures enables highly efficient mirrorless lasers.
• This approach provides a robust framework for developing compact, flexible, and polarization-controlled distributed feedback lasers without external mirrors.