Compact dye laser on a chip fabricated by ultraviolet nanoimprint lithography

High aspect ratio and high resolution distributed feed back (DFB) gratings have been patterned on a fused silica plate by ultraviolet nanoimprint lithography and reactive ion etch techniques. Then, they were integrated into a microfluidic chip for optofluidic operations. The authors observed laser emission from organic dye solutions flowing through an optical resonator formed between two third order DFB gratings. Such a dye layer can operate with a picoliter dye solution. With rhodamine 6G dye molecules dissolved in ethanol and pumped by a frequency-doubled Nd:YAG pulsed laser, a laser emission of threshold of 12 mu J/mm(2) has been found. (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics.