Whispering gallery modes at 800 nm and 1550 nm in concentric Si-nc/Er:SiO2 microdisks

Abstract

We examined a concentric Si nanocrystal (Si-nc) and Er doped SiO 2 (Er:SiO 2 ) microdisk structure supporting high-Q whispering gallery modes (WGMs) at both visible and telecom wavelengths. This structure provides a means to utilize Si-nc luminescence as an optical pump for an Er:SiO 2 cavity without subjecting a telecom-wavelength, Er:SiO 2 -based mode to loss mechanisms associated with the Si-nc material. After fabricating a concentric microdisk consisting of an inner Si-nc disk and an outer Er:SiO 2 ring, we characterize visible wavelength WGMs excited by the Si-nc photoluminescence and observed spectrometer limited quality factors as high as 10 3 . Telecom wavelength photoluminescence from the Er:SiO 2 ring was measured to have a quality factor as high as 10 4 in the erbium luminescence region using a passive pulled fiber setup. © 2010 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers.