For decades, engineers have tried to find a practical way to make efficient, chip-compatible lasers for ultra-fast optical communication networks and advanced computing systems. Traditional III-V semiconductor solutions are still expensive and tough to integrate with silicon platforms.
Now, a research team at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China, has made a breakthrough with all-inorganic perovskite films. These materials are low-cost, emit light strongly, and work with different substrates.
They tackled a stubborn problem called Auger recombination. With their new approach, they might finally make perovskite-based lasers commercially viable for photonic chips and flexible optoelectronic devices.
The Promise and Problem of Perovskite Lasers
All-inorganic perovskite films have caught a lot of attention for their great optical properties and low production costs. They’re an attractive alternative to pricier semiconductor tech.
But there’s a big catch: Auger recombination. This issue has kept perovskite lasers from reaching their full potential.
Auger recombination is a non-radiative process. Instead of emitting photons, excited charge carriers transfer their energy to others, losing it quickly.
When lasers run continuously or nearly so, this effect drains the carrier population fast. Efficiency drops, and stable lasing becomes nearly impossible.
Why Auger Recombination is Such a Challenge
This mechanism hits perovskites especially hard. It limits the gain needed for sustained laser action.
Without a way to suppress Auger recombination, perovskite lasers just can’t hit the efficiency and durability targets for chip-level use.
A Simple Yet Effective Solution from Zhejiang University
The Zhejiang University team came up with a surprisingly simple fix for Auger recombination in polycrystalline perovskite films. They added a volatile ammonium additive during the film’s annealing stage.
This additive sparks what they call a phase reconstruction process. It gets rid of low-dimensional phases in the perovskite, leaving behind a pure three-dimensional (3D) crystalline network.
That refined structure matters. It removes structural defects and energy traps that usually let non-radiative recombination happen.
How Phase Reconstruction Improves Performance
Switching to a defect-free 3D phase cuts down recombination channels. More charge carriers stick around to generate photons, instead of being lost as heat.
And, impressively, this boost in performance doesn’t come with more optical loss—something pretty rare in laser material engineering.
Building a High-Performance Perovskite VCSEL
With these optimized films, the researchers built a single-mode vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL). This type of laser shows up a lot in telecom and sensing applications.
Their results? Genuinely impressive:
- Lasing threshold: just 17.3 μJ/cm²—lower than most similar devices
- Quality factor (Q): a strong 3850, meaning high optical coherence and minimal losses
- Stable operation under quasi-continuous nanosecond pumping, getting closer to true continuous-wave operation
Why These Metrics Matter
A low threshold means you need less energy to start lasing, which is great for efficiency and makes it easier to shrink devices for chips. High quality factors matter when you want clean, steady light output.
These advances push perovskite materials closer to practical use in real-world devices.
Future Applications and Impact
This work could speed up the development of electrically driven, continuous-wave perovskite lasers. That would make it much easier to integrate them into silicon photonic chips for data centers, 6G networks, and optical computing.
The films’ structural flexibility also makes them a great fit for flexible optoelectronic devices. Who knows—maybe we’ll see wearable or foldable photonic tech sooner than we think.
A Path Toward Commercialization
The fabrication method just needs a simple additive treatment during standard annealing. That’s why it looks promising for scaling up without breaking the bank.
Of course, there’s still work ahead. If researchers can prove long-term stability and make it work with electrical pumping, perovskite lasers might finally break into mainstream photonic systems.
Here is the source article for this story: Zhejiang researchers boost perovskite laser by suppressing energy loss