J. Dai

Whispering gallery-mode lasing in ZnO microrods at room temperature

An individual hexagonal ZnO microrod was employed as a whispering-gallery mode (WGM) microcavity to obtain ultraviolet lasing at room temperature. The WGM lasing shows a low threshold, a high quality factor, and distinct mode structure. A typical stimulated emission from the ZnO microrod with diagonal of 6.67 μm exhibits a low lasing threshold of 255 kW/cm2. The observed discrete lasing modes match with the simulated positions very well. The spatial distribution of the lasing intensity demonstrates the lasing output direction and provides the direct evidence of the WGM resonant mechanism. We systematically investigated the lasing performance for different sized microrods.

Combined whispering gallery mode laser from hexagonal ZnO microcavities

The hexagonal ZnO microrods were employed as whispering gallery mode (WGM) microcavities to obtain ultraviolet laser at room temperature. For each individual ZnO microrod, the laser presented low threshold and high quality Q factor and clear WGM spectral structure. The lasing spectra from different microcavities were combined together by pumping two or more ZnO microrods simultaneously. The resonant process and lasing characteristics, such as lasing mode, threshold, and Q factor, were investigated in experiment and theory.

Exciton and electron-hole plasma lasing in ZnO dodecagonal whispering-gallery-mode microcavities at room temperature

Dodecagonal ZnO microrods were fabricated by vapor transport method. A dodecagonal ZnO microrod with diameter of 6.35 μm was employed as a whispering gallery mode microcavity, the low threshold exciton lasing was stimulated. In another smaller microrod, the electron-hole plasma lasing was observed under intense excitation as the carrier density was larger than the Mott transition density. The interference condition in the dodecagonal cavity was deduced, and the mode structures were investigated. Compared to the hexagonal microcavity with same diameter, the dodecagonal microcavity has higher lasing performance.

Welding of gold nanowires with different joining procedures

Welding of single-crystal metallic nanowires is likely to have an important role in the bottom-up fabrication of nanodevices. The welding effects of free ends of two single-crystal gold nanowires (Au–Au) were demonstrated by Monte Carlo simulations in this paper. The quantum corrected Sutton–Chen type many-body potential was used to model the metal–metal interactions. Metallic nanowires were first placed closely with head-to-head, head-to-side and side-to-side joining procedures. Two ends were successfully welded together to form a continuous nanowire by annealing at different temperatures. The welding effects of the different joining procedure with different temperatures were compared. Structures of the welded specimens were characterized by the common neighbor analysis technique. Variable atomic mobility, freedom and contacting angles may result in different bonding strengths in the three different configurations. The results showed that the joint structure welded at low temperature were similar to the cold welding without fusion meanwhile the molten phase was presented in the joint when processing at the high temperatures.

Electro-pumped whispering gallery mode ZnO microlaser array

By employing vapor-phase transport method, ZnO microrods are fabricated and directly assembled on p-GaN substrate to form a heterostructural microlaser array, which avoids of the relatively complicated etching process comparing previous work. Under applied forward bias, whispering gallery mode ZnO ultraviolet lasing is obtained from the as-fabricated heterostructural microlaser array. The devices electroluminescence originates from three distinct electron-hole recombination processes in the heterojunction interface, and whispering gallery mode ultraviolet lasing is obtained when the applied voltage is beyond the lasing threshold. This work may present a significant step towards future fabrication of a facile technique for micro/nanolasers.

Multiphoton absorption-induced optical whispering-gallery modes in ZnO microcavities at room temperature

Ultralong ZnO microrods with a perfect hexagonal cross section were synthesized on a large scale by the vapour phase transport method and were employed as a whispering-gallery mode (WGM) cavity to realize optical resonance and lasing. An individual ZnO microrod was selected to investigate the multiphoton absorption-induced optical behaviours based on the enhancement of the nonlinear optical interaction in the WGM cavity. Three-photon absorption-induced UV lasing, second-harmonic generation and defect-related visible emission simultaneously present distinct WGMs under the excitation of femtosecond laser pulses at 1200 nm. When the pump laser was changed to 1240 nm, four-photon absorption-induced WGM lasing was observed. The characteristics and generation process of the above resonant signals were investigated in detail.

Space-time-coding digital metasurfaces

The recently proposed digital coding metasurfaces make it possible to control electromagnetic (EM) waves in real time, and allow the implementation of many different functionalities in a programmable way. However, current configurations are only space-encoded, and do not exploit the temporal dimension. Here, we propose a general theory of space-time modulated digital coding metasurfaces to obtain simultaneous manipulations of EM waves in both space and frequency domains, i.e., to control the propagation direction and harmonic power distribution simultaneously. As proof-of-principle application examples, we consider harmonic beam steering, beam shaping, and scattering-signature control. For validation, we realize a prototype controlled by a field-programmable gate array, which implements the harmonic beam steering via an optimized space-time coding sequence. Numerical and experimental results, in good agreement, demonstrate good performance of the proposed approach, with potential applications to diverse fields such as wireless communications, cognitive radars, adaptive beamforming, holographic imaging.Current digital coding metasurfaces are only space-encoded. Here, the authors propose space-time modulated digital coding metasurfaces to obtain simultaneous manipulations of electromagnetic waves and present harmonic beam steering, beam shaping, and scattering-signature control as application examples.

Generation of radio vortex beams with designable polarization using anisotropic frequency selective surface

We propose a strategy to convert a linearly polarized wave from a single point source to an orbital angular momentum (OAM) wave by arbitrary polarization via an anisotropic frequency selective surface (FSS) in the microwave frequency. By tailoring the geometries of FSS elements, reflection-phases in x and y polarizations are engineered and encoded independently, which allows us to design the eventual polarization state of the generated OAM vortex beam by elaborately selecting individual coding sequences for each polarization. Two types of FSSs are designed and experimentally characterized to demonstrate the capability of OAM generation with circular and linear polarizations, respectively, showing excellent performance in a wide bandwidth from 14 to 16 GHz. This method provides opportunities for polarization multiplexing in microwave OAM communication systems.