纳米等离子体激光器研究进展

半导体激光器在生物技术、信息存储、光子医学诊疗等方面得到了广泛应用。随着纳米技术和纳米光子学的发展，紧凑微型化激光器应用前景引人关注。当激光器谐振腔尺寸减小到发射波长时，电磁谐振腔中将产生更为有趣的物理效应。因此，在发展低维、低泵浦阈值的超快相干光源，以及纳米光电集成和等离激元光路时，减小半导体激光器的三维尺寸至关重要。在本综述中，首先介绍了纳米等离子体激光器中的谐振腔模式增益和限制因子的总体理论，并综述了金属-绝缘材料-半导体纳米(MIS)结构或其它相关金属覆盖半导体结构的纳米等离子体激光器各方面的总体研究进展。特别地，对基于MIS结构的等离子体谐振腔实现纳米等离子体激光器三维衍射极限的突破，进行了详细的介绍。本文也介绍并展望了纳米等离子体激光器的技术挑战和发展趋势，为纳米激光器进一步研究提供参考。

Advances of plasmonic nanolasers

Semiconductor lasers are widely used for applications in biology, information storage, photonics and medical therapeutics. With the development of the emerging area of nano-optics and nanophotonics, more compact lasers attract significant interest. As the cavity size is reduced with respect to the emission wavelength, interesting physical effects in electromagnetic cavities arise. To scale down the semiconductor lasers in all three dimensions plays an important role in the development of low-dimension, low-threshold, and ultrafast coherent light sources, as well as integrated nano-optoelectronic and plasmonic circuits. In this review, the overall formalism of mode gain and confinement factor in the metal–semiconductor plasmonic lasers was introduced firstly. In addition, an updated overview of the latest developments, particularly in plasmonic nanolasers using the metal-insulator-semiconductor (MIS) configuration and another related metal-cladded semiconductor microlasers was presented. In particular, it has been experimentally demonstrated that the use of plasmonic cavities based on MIS nanostructures can indeed break the diffraction limit in three dimensions. We also present some perspectives on the challenges and development trend for the plasmonic nanolasers. This review can provide useful guide for the research of plasmonic nanolasers.