Ti₃C₂ MXene Photoexciting Nanoflakes for Localization of Supercontinuum Lasing of Aqueous-Phase Quantum Dots

Materials with excellent absorption performance of electromagnetic waves can efficiently transform electromagnetic energy to heat energy and are suitable for modern applications, including the bolometer and electromagnetic interference (EMI) shields with minimal thickness. In recent years, two-dimensional (2D) transition metal carbides (MXenes) were identified as efficient electromagnetic wave absorbers that could provide opportunities for constructing chip-level smarter optoelectronic devices. Here, we experimentally demonstrated a smarter localized supercontinuum laser with quantum dots coupled by active Ti₃C₂ MXene nanoflakes. By employing the transformation of electromagnetic energy to heat energy of Ti₃C₂ MXene nanoflakes, broadband nonlinear optical scattering with wavelength insensitivity was triggered to generate the localized laser cavity for supercontinuum lasing of aqueous-phase quantum dots. This smarter supercontinuum laser is expected to not only have promising applications in some modern equipment such as nanofluidic-based biological and chemical monitoring and sensing, ultraprecision metrology, and optical coherence tomography but also provide a novel design strategy for the next-generation optoelectronics.