A 'lifelike' laser can self-regulate, adjust its structure, and work together

By mimicking the features of living systems, self-regulating lasers can produce new materials for sensing, computing, light sources and displays.

While many artificial materials have advanced properties, they still have a long way to go to incorporate the versatility and functionality of living materials that can adapt to their situation.

Our laser systems can reconfigure and work together, enabling the first step to emulate the ever-evolving relationship between structure and functionality that is typical of living materials. Professor Riccardo Sapienza

For example, in the human body, bones and muscles are constantly rearranging their structure and composition to better support changes in weight and activity levels.

Now, researchers from Imperial College London and University College London have demonstrated the first spontaneously self-organizing laser device, which can reconfigure when conditions change.

The innovation, reported in Nature Physics, will help enable the development of smart photonic materials capable of better mimicking properties of biological matter, such as responsiveness, adaptation, self-healing and collective behavior.

Blending structure and functionality

Co-lead author Professor Riccardo Sapienza, from the Department of Physics at Imperial, said: “The lasers, which power most of our technology, are designed from crystalline materials to have precise and static properties. We asked ourselves if we could make a laser with the ability to combine structure and functionality, to reconfigure itself and work the same way biological materials do.

“Our laser systems can reconfigure and work together, thus enabling the first step to emulate the ever-evolving relationship between structure and functionality that is typical of living materials.”

A laser is a device that amplifies light to produce a special form of light. The self-assembly laser in the team’s experiment consists of microparticles dispersed in a liquid with a high ‘gain’ – the ability to amplify light. Once enough of these microparticles have gathered, they can harness external energy to ‘lase’ – producing a laser beam.

An external laser is used to heat the ‘Janus’ particles (particles coated on one side with a light-absorbing material), around where the microparticles congregate. The gain created by this cluster of microparticles can be turned on and off by changing the intensity of the external laser, which in turn controls the size and density of the cluster.

Next generation material

The team also demonstrated how the booster cluster could be transferred in space by heating different Janus particles, demonstrating the adaptability of the system. Janus particles can also collaborate, creating clusters that have properties beyond the simple addition of two clusters, such as changing their shape and increasing their reinforcing strength.

Lead author Dr Giorgio Volpe, from the Department of Chemistry at UCL, said: “Today, lasers are used as commonplace in medicine, telecommunications, as well as in industrial production. Realizing lasers with lifelike properties will enable the development of robust, autonomous and durable next-generation materials and devices for new sensing, computing, non-conventional, light sources and display applications.”

Next, the team will study how to improve the laser’s autonomous behavior to make it more alive. The first application of this technology could be for the next generation of electronic inks for smart displays.

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‘Self-organized Lasers of Reconfigurable Colloidal Assemblies’ by Manish Trivedi, Dhruv Saxena, Wai Kit Ng, Riccardo Sapienza, and Giorgio Volpe published in Nature Physics.

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