Lasing from all-polymer microcavities

We report on the laser action in a microcavity where both the dielectric mirrors and the active material have a macromolecular nature, resulting in a full plastic laser device. Distributed Bragg reflectors (DBRs) are prepared by spin-coating of polyvinylcarbazole and cellulose acetate orthogonal solutions and the active layer consists of a highly fluorescent conjugated polymer poly(9,9-dioctylfluorenyl-2,7-diyl-co-1,4-benzo-(2,1'-3)-thiadiazole) (F8BT) spun film. A quality factor in the range 80-180 is achieved and the cavity mode is carefully tuned on the peak of the F8BT amplified spontaneous emission spectrum. Under pulsed optical pumping, laser emission is obtained with a surprisingly low lasing threshold (<20 mu J cm(2)) for a full plastic DBR optical cavity. This result opens a simple and cheap way to obtain a new class of polymer lasers.