Synthesis and characterization of dye-doped polymeric thin films to be used as gain medium in plasmonic nanolasers

In recent years there has been a burst of scientific research towards the development of novel tunable laser sources in the visible or near-infrared range, integrated at the nanoscale, able to overcome the need for a macroscopic resonant cavity like conventional lasers. Currently one of the most promising approaches in this sense is offered by 'plasmonic nanolasers', i.e., nanosystems in which it is exploited the coupling between suitable fluorophores in liquid solution or in polymeric matrix used as the gain medium and two-dimensional ordered arrays of nanostructures of plasmonic metals, whose periodicity is tuned on the emission of the fluorophore. The proposed thesis activity is experimental and is aimed at the investigation of the coupling mechanisms between the dye molecules in the gain medium and the plasmonic nanoarrays by realizing plasmonic nanolasers based on 2D nanoarrays with a different degree of coupling of the gain medium, and the characterization of their emission and optical amplification properties.