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Blue lasers using low-toxicity colloidal quantum dots

Nature Nanotechnology volume 20, pages 229–236 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Blue lasers play a pivotal role in laser-based display, printing, manufacturing, data recording and medical technologies. Colloidal quantum dots (QDs) are solution-grown materials with strong, tunable emission covering the whole visible spectrum, but the development of QD lasers has largely relied on Cd-containing red-emitting QDs, with technologically viable blue QD lasers remaining out of reach. Here we report on the realization of tunable and robust lasing using low-toxicity blue-emitting ZnSe–ZnS core–shell QDs that are compact in size yet still feature suppressed Auger recombination and long optical gain lifetime approaching 1 ns. These characteristics allow us to handle the blue QDs like laser dyes for liquid-state amplified spontaneous emission and lasing. The blue QD laser is operated under quasi-continuous-wave excitation by solid-state nanosecond lasers. A Littrow-configuration cavity enables narrow linewidth (<0.2 nm), wavelength-tunable, coherent and stable laser outputs without circulating the solution. These results indicate the promise of ZnSe–ZnS QDs to fill the ‘blue gap’ of QD lasers and to replace less stable blue laser dyes for a multitude of applications.

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Fig. 1: Characteristics of ZnSe–ZnS QDs.
Fig. 2: Femtosecond TA and optical gain of ZnSe–ZnS QDs.
Fig. 3: ASE from solution of ZnSe–ZnS QDs under femtosecond and nanosecond excitation.
Fig. 4: Tunable liquid lasing from a Littrow cavity under nanosecond excitation.
Fig. 5: Lasing directionality, coherence, polarization and stability.

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Data availability

All data are available in the main text or Supplementary Information and can be obtained upon request from K.W. (kwu@dicp.ac.cn). They are also available via figshare at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.26763205 (ref. 57). Source data are provided with this paper.

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Acknowledgements

K.W. acknowledges financial support from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (YSBR-007; XDB0970303), the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP I202246) and the New Cornerstone Science Foundation through the XPLORER PRIZE.

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  1. These authors contributed equally: Xuyang Lin, Yang Yang, Xueyang Li.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Molecular Reaction Dynamics, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dalian, China

    Xuyang Lin, Yang Yang, Xueyang Li, Yongshun Lv, Zhaolong Wang, Jun Du, Xiaohan Luo, Chunlei Xiao & Kaifeng Wu

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Xuyang Lin, Yang Yang, Yongshun Lv, Jun Du, Xiaohan Luo, Chunlei Xiao & Kaifeng Wu

  3. CAS Key Laboratory of Chemical Lasers, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dalian, China

    Dongjian Zhou

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Contributions

K.W. and X. Lin conceived the idea of this study. K.W. supervised and coordinated the project. X. Li and J.D. conducted initial studies on liquid QD lasing that inspired that current project. X. Lin synthesized the QDs and measured their spectroscopy and ASE. X. Lin, Y.Y. and X. Li measured the liquid laser with help from C.X., X. Luo and D.Z. Y.L. and J.D. synthesized the large-core QDs for control experiments and the QDs for film ASE measurements. Z.W. measured the PLE of the QDs. K.W. and X. Lin wrote the paper with inputs from all authors.

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Correspondence to Yang Yang or Kaifeng Wu.

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Nature Nanotechnology thanks Pieter Geiregat and Patanjali Kambhampati for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Lin, X., Yang, Y., Li, X. et al. Blue lasers using low-toxicity colloidal quantum dots. Nat. Nanotechnol. 20, 229–236 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-024-01812-0

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