Observation of inhibited spontaneous emission and stimulated emission of rhodamine 6G in polymer replica of synthetic opal

Abstract

We report the observation of inhibited spontaneous emission of organic dye rhodamine 6G infiltrated in a polymer replica of synthetic opal as a photonic crystal. The morphology-dependent resonances, superimposed on the broadband emission of rhodamine 6G due to spherical wavelength-sized microcavity enhancement of dye emission, have also been observed.

Laser emission from self-assembled active photonic crystal matrix

“…The rhodamine-B (RhB) dye molecules are present uniformly inside each polystyrene (PS) sphere, constituting active building blocks of the crystal, and hence these dyed crystals are quite different from the crystals used in similar studies earlier, where the passive photonic crystals were either infiltrated with the dye solution [5,6] or kept inside a cuvette filled with the dye solution [4,7,8]. By an appropriate choice of the colloidal diameter, the stop band wavelength is made to overlap with the emission spectrum of RhB.…”

“…Among a variety of applications of the photonic crystals, an important one is the fabrication of low threshold lasers [1]. In this connection, there have been several reports where the photonic crystals are used to control and modify the spontaneous emission of radiative materials [2][3][4][5]. The spontaneous emission of an emitter depends strongly upon its environment and it can be enhanced or inhibited depending on the allowed density of states in its environment.…”

“…Due to this property, the emission intensity of any embedded emitter in a photonic crystal environment redistributes and results in a modified emission spectrum. Different active materials, such as semiconductor quantum dots [2], rare earth ions [3] and laser dyes [4,5], have been implanted into the 3D photonic crystal matrix and modified emission has been studied in earlier works. An important requirement for these studies is the overlap between the emission spectrum of the emitter and the photonic stop band, while its absorption band is required to be far from the range of photonic stop band.…”

Entropically driven self-assembly of colloidal crystals on templates in space

“…136,139,[240][241][242][248][249][250] With few exceptions, 251 the measurements have been complicated by the fact that the samples were not usually single crystals. These methods range from studies of the spectrum of embedded fluorescent molecules, to studies of transmission versus wavelength at fixed angle, to angle-dependent studies of reflection or transmission versus wavelength.…”

The Development of Layered Photonic Band Gap Structures Using a Micro-Transfer Molding Technique

“…Opal structures were also infiltrated with laser dyes in an attempt to achieve similar lasing results as the scattering media [120][121][122][123] . Silica spheres were generally used to create the structures to be infiltrated with a solution of rhodamine 6G or other dyes.…”