From nanowire lasers to quantum wire lasers

Vapor-liquid-solid epitaxy process has been developed to synthesize high quality semiconductor nanowire arrays. The nanowires generally are single crystalline and have diameters of 10-200 nm and aspect ratios of 10-100. There is much current interest in the optical properties of these semiconductor nanowires, as the cylindrical geometry and strong two-dimensional confinement of electrons, holes, and photons makes them particularly attractive as potential building blocks for nanoscale electronics and optoelectronics devices. We recently reported the first study of laser action and nonlinear optical mixing in individual zinc oxide (ZnO) and GaN nanowires, demonstrating the potential of these structures as room temperature nanoscopic coherent light sources and frequency converters. These efforts further led to the demonstration of ZnO nanoribbon laser as well as GaN-based quantum wire lasers.