All-organic two-dimensional photonic crystal laser based on holographic polymer dispersed liquid crystals

In this paper, we report a kind of dye-doped two-dimensional photonic crystal based on holographic polymer dispersed liquid crystals (HPDLC) with a lattice constant of 582nm, which is prepared conveniently with a single step holographic exposure. Under the excitation of a frequency-doubled Nd:yttrium-aluminum-garnet laser operating at a wavelength of 532nm, optically pumped lasing with narrow bandwidth and low threshold is observed from a 4-(dicyanomethylene)-2-methyl-6-(4-dimethylaminostyryl)-4H-pyran dye-doped two-dimensional photonic crystal. The results show that the emitted lasing peak is centered at about 603nm with a full width at half maximum of only 0.4nm, and the threshold energy is about 22.7 μJ, which is evidently lower than the reported previously. The laser bandwidth decreases by a factor of three from 1.4nm to 0.4nm compared with that of the dye-doped HPDLC transmission grating. This result exhibits a bright prospect in application of tunable photonic crystal laser.