Molecular Crystals and Liquid Crystals, Vol.471, 325-333, 2007
Amplified spontaneous emissions from pi-conjugated dye doped polymer film with possible dye ordering
Smooth polymer films doped with pi- conjugated organic dyes, formed around a multimode silica fiber under the influence of capillary force, exhibited very narrow photoluminescence peaks upon laser excitation as compared with the fluorescence in solution. The peak position showed no dependence on the excitation wavelength, indicating that it could not be explained by a whispering gallery mode that should be observed in a medium with broad optical gain. The peaks can be explained by amplified spontaneous emissions ( ASE) because the intensity depended linearly on the excitation intensity with a threshold. When the dye- doped film was formed on the portion of a fiber with the clad etched out and was excited by the linearly polarized laser propagating inside the fiber core, we observed ASE peaks not of the dyes but of the optical fiber itself, suggesting the possibility that the dyes were oriented with their transition moment pointing parallel to the film surface, therefore incapable to be photoexcited. These fiber ASE peaks shifted to longer wavelength when we varied the excitation wavelength to shorter wavelength, which clearly ruled out the possibility of silicate Raman scattering as the origin.