Low Threshold Organic Semiconductor Lasers - Wang, Yue

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Résumé :
This thesis focuses on two areas - the development of miniature plastic lasers that can be powered by LEDs, and the application of these lasers as highly sensitive sensors for vapours of nitroaromatic explosives (e.g. TNT). Polymer lasers are extremely compact visible lasers; the research described in the thesis is groundbreaking, driving forward the technology and physical understanding to allow these lasers to be routinely pumped by a single high-power LED. A notable advance in the work is the demonstration of nanoimprinted polymer lasers, which exhibit the world's lowest pump threshold densities by two orders of magnitude. The thesis also advances the application of these compact, novel lasers as highly sensitive detectors of explosive vapours, demonstrating that rapid detection can be achieved when microporous polymers are used. This work also demonstrates a prototype CMOS-based microsystem sensor for explosive vapours, exploiting a new detection approach.

Biographie:
Yue Wang's research areas include decision-making and sensor management for search, classification and tracking using multiple autonomous vehicles, distributed estimation and control of networked cyber-physical systems, and dynamic coverage control over large-scale domains. She got her Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in May 2011. She is currently a postdoctoral research associate in the Electrical Engineering Department at University of Notre Dame and will be an Assistant Professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department in Clemson University from 2012. Islam I. Hussein's research areas include nonlinear and evolutionary dynamics, control and optimization, detection and estimation, risk-based decision-making, sensor/communication networks, and agent-based systems. He is an assistant professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. From 2005 to 2006, he held a postdoctoral research associate position at the Coordinated Science Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He was awarded the Ph.D. degree in Aerospace Engineering in 2005 and the M.Sc. degrees in Aerospace Engineering and Applied Mathematics in 2002 from the University of Michigan....

Sommaire:
Introduction.- Theory of organic semiconductor lasers.- Experimental methods.- Low-threshold and broadly tuneable organic lasers based on star-shaped oligofluorene truxenes.- Commercial LED pumped organic semiconductor lasers.- Low threshold nanoimprinted organic lasers integration with micro-LED arrays.- Polymer with intrinsic microporosity used as explosive vapour sensors.- Towards ultra-portable hybrid organic/inorganic explosives sensing devices.- Conclusions and future work.