Mirrorless lasing from mesostructured waveguides patterned by soft lithography

Mesostructured silica waveguide arrays were fabricated with a combination of acidic sol-gel block copolymer templating chemistry and soft lithography. Waveguiding was enabled by the use of a low-refractive index (1.15) mesoporous silica thin film support. When the mesostructure was doped with the laser dye rhodamine 6G, amplified spontaneous emission was observed with a low pumping threshold of 10 kilowatts per square centimeter, attributed to the mesostructure's ability to prevent aggregation of the dye molecules even at relatively high loadings within the organized high-surface area mesochannels of the waveguides. These highly processible, self-assembling mesostructured host media and claddings may have potential for the fabrication of integrated optical circuits.