Whispering Gallery Mode Lasers in Polymer Microcavities
Summary
Whispering gallery mode (WGM) lasers in polymer microcavities exploit total internal reflection around curved polymer boundaries to confine light in compact resonators. These systems combine the inherent flexibility and low cost of polymer materials with high quality (Q) factors, enabling low‐threshold lasing and facile integration with photonic circuits. Polymer microcavities are realised in various geometries, including microspheres and microfibres, and can be tuned via thermo-optic, photo-isomerisation or mechanical perturbation. Advances in material design and cavity fabrication have broadened applications in on-chip communications, sensing and biomedicine, underscoring their global significance and potential for scalable photonic platforms.
Research from Nature Portfolio
Recent studies have demonstrated the potential of self-assembled conjugated polymer microspheres to host high-Q WGMs, with quality factors exceeding 10⁴. Continuous-wave irradiation induces mode splitting through light-triggered oxidation, offering an in situ approach to tune resonance spectra. Complementary work on dye-doped polymer microfibres has shown controllable polarisation of lasing emission. By adjusting the pump orientation relative to the microfibre axis, transverse electric or magnetic modes can be selectively excited, enabling dynamic switching of output polarisation for integrated optical communication and sensing devices.
Whispering Gallery Mode Lasers in Polymer Microcavities publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in whispering gallery mode lasers in polymer microcavities across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Whispering gallery mode (WGM): An optical resonance that confines light by continuous total internal reflection around a curved dielectric boundary.
Quality factor (Q): A dimensionless parameter indicating the sharpness of a resonance, defined by the ratio of energy stored to energy dissipated per cycle.
Microcavity: A miniature optical cavity that confines light spatially to enhance light–matter interaction and control emission properties.
Photo-isomerisation: A reversible molecular transformation induced by light absorption that alters optical gain characteristics.
Thermo-optic effect: The change in a material’s refractive index in response to temperature variations, enabling wavelength tuning.
Mode splitting: The separation of previously degenerate resonance peaks into multiple distinct spectral lines due to cavity perturbations.
References
- Optically induced mode splitting in self-assembled, high quality-factor conjugated polymer microcavities. Scientific Reports (2016).
- Controllable Polarization of Lasing Emission From a Polymer Microfiber Laser. Scientific Reports (2019).
- Two wavelength band emission WGM lasers via photo-isomerization. Nanophotonics (2023).
- An all-optical tunable polymer WGM laser pumped by a laser diode. Nanoscale Advances (2022).
- Dynamic manipulation of WGM lasing by tailoring the coupling strength.. Optics Express (2022).
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