Department of Chemistry, University of Pennsylvania, 231 S. 34th Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, United States.
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, 3231 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, United States.
Nano Lett. 2022 Jun 22;22(12):4765-4773. doi: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.2c01011. Epub 2022 Jun 1.
Whispering-gallery microresonators have the potential to become the building blocks for optical circuits. However, encoding information in an optical signal requires on-demand tuning of optical resonances. Tuning is achieved by modifying the cavity length or the refractive index of the microresonator. Due to their solid, nondeformable structure, conventional microresonators based on bulk materials are inherently difficult to tune. In this work, we fabricate irreversibly tunable optical microresonators by using semiconductor nanocrystals. These nanocrystals are first assembled into colloidal spherical superparticles featuring whispering-gallery modes. Exposing the superparticles to shorter ligands changes the nanocrystal surface chemistry, decreasing the cavity length of the microresonator by 20% and increasing the refractive index by 8.2%. Illuminating the superparticles with ultraviolet light initiates nanocrystal photo-oxidation, providing an orthogonal channel to decrease the refractive index of the microresonator in a continuous fashion. Through these approaches, we demonstrate optical microresonators tunable by several times their free spectral range.
whispering-gallery 微谐振器有望成为光电路的基本构建块。然而,要在光信号中编码信息,则需要按需调整光谐振。可以通过改变腔长或微谐振器的折射率来实现调谐。由于其坚固、不可变形的结构,基于体材料的传统微谐振器本身很难进行调谐。在这项工作中,我们使用半导体纳米晶体制造了不可逆可调谐的光微谐振器。首先,这些纳米晶体被组装成具有 whispering-gallery 模式的胶体球形超粒子。将超粒子暴露于较短的配体中会改变纳米晶的表面化学性质,使微谐振器的腔长减少 20%,折射率增加 8.2%。用紫外线照射超粒子会引发纳米晶的光氧化,提供了一个正交通道,可连续降低微谐振器的折射率。通过这些方法,我们展示了可调谐的光微谐振器,其可调谐范围是其自由光谱范围的数倍。