Organic solid-state lasers based on sexiphenyl as active chromophore

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Abstract
We report on various sexiphenyl derivatives as gain media in organic solid-state lasers. The molecules involved in this research are simple p-sexiphenyl, the laser dye molecule 2,5,2””’,5””’-tetra-t-butyl-p-sexiphenyl (TBS) and the spirolinked sexiphenyl-derivative 2,7-bis(biphenyl-4-yl)-2’,7’-di-tert-butyl-9,9’-spirobifluorene. It appears that the morphology of vacuum-deposited thin films is highly dependent on the sterical dimensions of the respective molecules. Whereas thin films based on simple p-sexiphenyl comprise large clusters which significantly deteriorate their waveguiding properties; films formed by TBS, and the spiroderivative show a dramatically improved morphology with reduced surface roughness. Therefore amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) and lasing are demonstrated in both of the last but not in films based on p-sexiphenyl. Second-order distributed-feedback lasers with TBS as the active medium have been prepared with an emission between 390 and 435 nm depending on the grating period of the Bragg reflector. While the ASE characteristics are similar in films formed by TBS and the spiroderivative, TBS exhibits even superior laser threshold densities which are as low as 45μJ∕cm2 at a wavelength of 396 nm.