Co-extruded mechanically tunable multilayer elastomer laser

We have fabricated and studied mechanically tunable elastomer dye lasers constructed in large area sheets by a single-step layer-multiplying co-extrusion process. The laser films consist of a central dye-doped (Rhodamine-6G) elastomer layer between two 128-layer distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) films comprised of alternating elastomer layers with different refractive indices. The central gain layer is formed by folding the coextruded DBR film to enclose a dye-doped skin layer. By mechanically stretching the elastomer laser film from 0% to 19%, a tunable miniature laser source was obtained with similar to 50 nm continuous tunability from red to green. Optically pumped by a frequency-doubled Nd: YAG laser, the elastomer laser showed a lasing threshold of 0.9 mJ/cm(2) at 600 nm. (C) 2011 Optical Society of America