Random lasing from dye-doped negative liquid crystals using ZnO nanoparticles as tunable scatters

This work demonstrates the realization of a lasing in scattering media, which contains dispersive solution of ZnO nanoparticles (NPs) and laser dye 4-dicyanomethylene-2-methyle-6-(p-dimethylaminostyryl)-4H-pyran(DCM) in negative liquid crystals (LCs) that was injected into a cell. The lasing intensity of the dye-doped negative LC laser can be tuned from low to high if the NPs concentration is increased. The tunability of the laser is attributable to the clusters-sensitive feature in effective refractive index of the negative LCs. Such a tunable negative liquid crystal laser can be used in the fabrication of new optical sources, optical communication, and liquid crystal laser displays.