A team led by Professors David Di, Zou Chen, and Zhao Baodan from the College of Optoelectronic Science and Engineering at Zhejiang University has developed the world's first electrically driven perovskite laser. Their research was recently published in Nature.
There are many different types of lasers, and new laser materials such as perovskite semiconductors, organic semiconductors, and quantum dots currently demonstrate significant advantages. Among these materials, perovskite semiconductors offer broad technological promise due to their tunable emission spectra (capable of achieving a wide range of colors) and their ability to achieve an extremely low laser emission threshold when driven by light. However, the development of electrically driven perovskite lasers has long been the greatest challenge in the field of perovskite optoelectronics, a goal pursued by numerous research teams worldwide.
To achieve electrically driven laser emission, the researchers invented an integrated dual-cavity structure, combining a high-power microcavity perovskite LED subunit with a low-threshold perovskite single-crystal microcavity subunit in the same device, forming a vertically stacked multilayer structure. This device efficiently couples the large number of photons generated by the microcavity perovskite LED under electrical excitation (coupling efficiency reaches 82.7%) into the second microcavity, where it excites the single-crystal perovskite gain medium, generating lasing.
Under electrically excited conditions, the perovskite laser has a lasing threshold of 92 amperes per square centimeter, an order of magnitude lower than the best electrically driven organic lasers. Furthermore, the electrically driven perovskite laser exhibits superior repeatability and stability compared to organic lasers, enabling rapid modulation at a bandwidth of 36.2 MHz. This modulation rate is achieved by reducing the device's active area to minimize resistance and capacitance constants and using a silicon substrate to improve heat dissipation.
Electrically driven perovskite lasers can be used in a variety of applications, including optical data transmission, and can also be used as coherent light sources in integrated photonic chips and wearable devices. Researchers say that in the future, it will be necessary to overcome the nanosecond lifetime limitations of spontaneous emission from microcavity perovskite LED subunits to achieve gigahertz-level high-speed operation of the device.
Related paper information: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09457-2
- ukdOBdhQNEj09/01/2025