Integration of Nanoscale Light Emitters and Hyperbolic Metamaterials: An Efficient Platform for the Enhancement of Random Laser Action

Hyperbolic metamaterials have emerged as novel materials with exciting functionalities, especially for optoelectronic devices. Here, we provide the first attempt to integrate hyperbolic metamaterials with light emitting nanostructures, which enables to strongly enhance random laser action with reduced lasing threshold. Interestingly, the differential quantum efficiency can be enhanced by more than four times. The underlying mechanism can be interpreted well based on the fact that the high-k modes excited by hyperbolic metamaterials can greatly increase the possibility of forming close loops decreasing the energy consumption for the propagation of scattered photons in the matrix. In addition, out-coupled propagation of the high-k modes reaches to the far-field without being trapped inside the metamaterials due to the coupling with the random distribution of light emitting nanoparticles also plays an important role. Electromagnetic simulations derived from the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method are executed to support our interpretation. Realizing strong enhancement of laser action assisted by hyperbolic metamaterials provides an attractive, very simple and efficient scheme for the development of high performance optoelectronic devices, including phototransistors, and many other solid state lighting systems. Besides, because of increasing light absorption assisted by hyperbolic metamaterials structure, our approach shown is also useful for the application of highly efficient solar cells.