Highly photostable solid-state organic distributed feedback laser fabricated via thermal nanoimprint lithography

A highly photostable distributed feedback (DFB) laser has been fabricated by spin-coating a polystyrene film doped with a perylenediimide derivative on a SiO2 grating. The second-order grating, with a period of 368 nm, was fabricated via thermal nanoimprint lithography and pattern transfer. When the DFB laser is photopumped at 533 nm, the laser emission spectrum shows two peaks at 573 and 581 nm. The laser threshold (l(th)) is 30 times lower than the amplified spontaneous emission threshold for a sample without grating. These devices are very photostable: the halflife is longer than 100,000 pump pulses at a pump intensity of 6 mu J/pulse. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.