Plastic Lasers Starting to Shine

Maybe if they shine a while longer they won't be elusive any more.

Metal, too, is usually a bad thing to have in a laser cavity, because the metal absorbs photons to such an extent that it kills the lasing effect. Leo's team built a vertically oriented laser cavity that consists of an organic "active layer" between two mirrors. The mirrors are reflective gratings made from alternating layers of titanium oxide and silicon dioxide. In between the bottom mirror and the active layer they placed stripes of silver, 40 nanometers thick and 1110 nm wide.

Placing the metal grating on top of the reflective grating caused the creation of so-called Tamm plasmon polaritons. Plasmon polaritons are oscillations of electron density that can exist at the interface between metal and other materials and amplify light, so the placement of the metal actually increased the lasing effect. "It's possible to include a highly conductive metal contact into the cavity," Leo told the meeting. "If you pump it hard enough, it can lase."

wow. This truly IS breaking news...of use to the denizens of CR4.