title: Near-Infrared Lasing from Small-Molecule Organic Hemispheres.
abstract: Near-infrared (NIR) lasers are key components for applications, such as telecommunication, spectroscopy, display, and biomedical tissue imaging. Inorganic III-V semiconductor (GaAs) NIR lasers have achieved great successes but require expensive and sophisticated device fabrication techniques. Organic semiconductors exhibit chemically tunable optoelectronic properties together with self-assembling features that are well suitable for low-temperature solution processing. Major blocks in realizing NIR organic lasing include low stimulated emission of narrow-bandgap molecules due to fast nonradiative decay and exciton-exciton annihilation, which is considered as a main loss channel of population inversion for organic lasers under high carrier densities. Here we designed and synthesized the small organic molecule (E)-3-(4-(di-p-tolylamino)phenyl)-1-(1-hydroxynaphthalen-2-yl)prop-2-en-1-one (DPHP) with amphiphilic nature, which elaborately self-assembles into micrometer-sized hemispheres that simultaneously serves as the NIR emission medium with a photoluminescence quantum efficiency of ∼15.2%, and the high-Q (∼1.4 × 10(3)) whispering gallery mode microcavity. Moreover, the radiative rate of DPHP hemispheres is enhanced up to ∼1.98 × 10(9) s(-1) on account of the exciton-vibrational coupling in the solid state with the J-type molecular-coupling component, and meanwhile the exciton-exciton annihilation process is eliminated. As a result, NIR lasing with a low threshold of ∼610 nJ/cm(2) is achieved in the single DPHP hemisphere at room temperature. Our demonstration is a major step toward incorporating the organic coherent light sources into the compact optoelectronic devices at NIR wavelengths.
authors.affiliation: †Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences (BNLMS), Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, P. R. China.|‡University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Xuedong
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: §Beijing Key Laboratory for Optical Materials and Photonic Devices, Department of Chemistry, Capital Normal University, Beijing 100048, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Qing
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Liao
authors.affiliation: †Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences (BNLMS), Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, P. R. China.|‡University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Hui
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: †Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences (BNLMS), Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, P. R. China.|‡University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Shuming
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Bai
authors.affiliation: †Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences (BNLMS), Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Yishi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.affiliation: §Beijing Key Laboratory for Optical Materials and Photonic Devices, Department of Chemistry, Capital Normal University, Beijing 100048, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Xiaomei
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.affiliation: ∥Department of Chemistry, The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487, United States.
authors.forename: Huaiyuan
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.affiliation: †Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences (BNLMS), Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Qiang
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Shi
authors.affiliation: †Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences (BNLMS), Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, P. R. China.|§Beijing Key Laboratory for Optical Materials and Photonic Devices, Department of Chemistry, Capital Normal University, Beijing 100048, P. R. China.|⊥Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemical Science and Engineering, Tianjin 300072, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Hongbing
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Fu