Stable organic self-assembled microwire lasers for chemical vapor sensing

Organic microlasers hold great potentials in fabricating on-chip sensors for integrated photonic circuits due to their chemical versatility and reactivity. However, chemical vapor detection is still challenging for organic microlaser sensors, as it requires not only optical gain and self-assembly capability, but also rapid response to stimuli and long-term stability under high excitation power. In this work, a new laser dye 4,7-bis(9-octyl-7-(4-(octyloxy)phenyl)-9H-carbazol-2-yl)benzo[c][1,2,5]thiadiazole (BPCBT) is designed and synthesized, which self-assembles into microwires showing strong intramolecular charge transfer (ICT) photoluminescence with >80% quantum efficiency. It enables the lasing from BPCBT microwires under a low threshold of 16 μJ·mm −2 ·pulse −1 with significantly improved stability over conventional organic microlasers. The stimulated emission amplifies the fluorescence change in the BPCBT microwires under chemical vapors including various acid, acetone, and ethanol vapors, indicating high sensitivity and high selectivity of organic microlaser sensors desirable for compact sensor arrays in integrated photonics. Organic microlaser sensors are highly promising for chemical vapor detection due to their chemical versatility, but their poor stabilities are hampering applications. Here the authors report the synthesis and lasing properties of a dye that is self-assembled into microwires exhibiting a strong acid vapor response and good stability.