Microcavity Lasing from Block Peptide Hierarchically Assembled Quantum Dot Spherical Resonators

Quantum dot (QD) resonators for microcavity lasing applications were successfully synthesized by a single system diblock copolypeptide mediated process. Using specifically tailored block peptides and nanoparticles, we present here the cooperative assembly of cadmium selenide (CdSe) QDs and silica nanoparticles into 3-dimensional microcavities with a high QD volume fraction. These hollow QD microspheres are a perfect combination of both quantum and optical confinement, in which the electronic states of the 3-dimensional confined semiconductor nanocrystals are coupled to the photonic states of the spherical microcavity. We show that the specific interaction between the mode properties of the cavity with the emission of its QD building blocks leads to room-temperature microcavity lasing without the use of additional mirrors, substrate spheres, or gratings.