Low Threshold and Long-Range Propagation Plasmonic Nanolaser Enhanced by Black Phosphorus Nanosheets

This work theoretically proposes a novel surface plasmon polaritons nanolaser enhanced by 2D black phosphorus (BP) nanosheets, which can greatly enhance the local electric field and reduce the normalized mode area. The plasmonic nanolaser is created by integrating few-layered BP nanosheets into a hybrid waveguide structure consisting of a cadmium sulfide (CdS) semiconductor nanowire, a low-index dielectric MgF2 buffer film, and a silver substrate. Both the electric field distribution and mode parameters originating from the proposed hybrid structure are systematically studied. The simulation results show that, under the optimal conditions with r = 95 nm, h(gap) = 2 nm, and d = 1 nm, three key mode parameters (effective mode area, gain threshold, and propagation distance) can be determined to be 0.008 lambda(2), 0.5997 mu m(-1), and 3309 nm, respectively. Moreover, the figure of merit of the proposed nanolaser is enhanced by almost 2.3 times compared with the model without BP nanosheets. It can be expected that the proposed plasmonic nanolaser shows great potential in exploring ultrahigh density photonic integrated circuit.

Automated summary

This work introduces a novel surface plasmon polaritons nanolaser enhanced by 2D black phosphorus nanosheets, which can significantly enhance the local electric field and reduce the normalized mode area. The simulation results show that under optimal conditions, key mode parameters can reach high values in the proposed hybrid structure.