IISER Bhopal researchers use facet engineering to produce high-efficiency lasers

NEW DELHI: The Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Bhopal develop a process by manipulating tiny crystals of cesium lead bromine to create high-intensity laser with low energy output using fact engineering.

The research study was led by IISER Bhopal, PhD scholar, Santu K Bera and Megha Shrivastava along with Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, Kolkata, professor, Narayan Pradhan and his student Suman Bera. The development was published in the journal, Nano Letters.

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Currently, lasers are used in applications including telecommunications, lighting, displays, medical diagnostics and therapeutics, among others. However, there has been an increase in development of low-threshold lasers that require less energy output instead.

The research team at IISER Bhopal has been working with nanocrystals of a material called cesium lead bromide that emits energy in the form of heat instead of light. To overcome this challenge, IISER Bhopal researchers developed a new technique called facet engineering. This technique involves changing the shape of the nanocrystals to reduce the gain threshold.

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This study can be further used in the field of laser and quantum physics and highlights the potential facet engineering as new method to manipulate the properties of non-dimensional materials.

Explaining the work, IISER Bhopal, KV Adarsh, said: “By changing the shape of the nanocrystals from a cube (6 faces) to a rhombicuboctahedron (26 faces), we were able to achieve a five-fold reduction in the gain threshold, which could make these nanocrystals much more useful in practical applications.”