Effect of generation and soft lithography on semiconducting dendrimer lasers

Conjugated dendrimers are promising optoelectronic materials as their modular architecture enables independent tuning of the optical, electronic, and processing properties. Dendrimer distributed feedback lasers are demonstrated, and an improvement in slope efficiency from 0.3 % to 1.6 % is seen as the dendrimer generation is increased. Simple fabrication of the lasers by soft lithography is also shown, giving a high slope efficiency of 14 %. The combination of high efficiency dendrimer gain media and soft lithographic fabrication techniques makes conjugated dendrimers attractive materials for organic semiconductor lasers.