Matériaux fluorés structurés pour sources laser rouge/verte – FLUOLASE

The FLUOLASE project is proposed within the context of a strong demand in visible laser sources. Indeed, excepted for the blue, which can be covered by using the recently developed GaN semiconductor laser diodes, no reliable and wavelength well-adapted laser sources are yet commercially available between 525 and 630 nm in the green, orange and red domains. The market for this kind of coherent light sources is huge as it covers all the lightning applications such as video-projection requiring efficient RGB sources. Moreover, some niches require the highest degree of control over the properties of light: colour purity, polarization, or brightness. Among them quantum information processing using rare earth doped materials needs single-mode and stable laser sources operating in the orange domain. The present project consists in the study and the realisation of compact solid state laser sources emitting in the visible range by using low phonon energy materials doped with rare-earth ions. The target wavelengths will be more particularly the red and green for RGB integrated systems and orange for quantum information processing. Optical pumping of these materials will be achieved by using commercially available semiconductor laser diodes. Two complementary routes will be explored: one aims to reach the objective by a direct pumping in the blue with a GaN Laser Diode, the other is based on upconversion processes. Pumping, then, will be achieved by using standard infrared laser diodes around 850 or 980 nm. To achieve compact, integrated and low threshold laser sources, the device will be realized from micro-structured bulk materials (crystals and glasses) and from micro-structured thin-films obtained by using two different techniques : Liquid Phase Epitaxy for Crystals, and Ion Exchange for glasses.