Photonic Crystal Lasers and PCSELs

Abstract: Photonic crystals were originally invented for their potential in light-matter interactions for efficient lasers. In this talk, I will review the different types of photonic crystal lasers. I will start with scaling photonic crystal lasers towards attojoule optoelectronics. In the second part, I will focus on the scaling of photonic crystal surface-emitting lasers (PCSELs) and coherent PCSEL arrays towards high-power applications.    

References:

[1] W. Zhou and S. Fan (Ed.), “Photonic Crystal Metasurface Optoelectronics”, Vol. 100 in Semiconductors and Semimetals, Elsevier (2019).

[2] W. Zhou et al., “Progress in 2D photonic crystal Fano resonance photonics (Invited review)”, Prog. Quantum. Electron. 38, 1-74 (2014).

[3] W. Zhou and M. Pan, “The Future of Photonic Crystal Surface Emitting Lasers (Perspective)”, Appl. Phys. Lett. 123, 140501 (2023).

[4] C. Gautam, M. Pan, Y. Chen, T. J. Rotter, G. Balakrishnan, and W. Zhou, "Laterally coupled photonic crystal surface emitting laser arrays," Journal of Applied Physics, vol. 135, 2024.

[5] M. Pan, C. Gautam, Y. Chen, T. Rotter, G. Balakrishnan, and W. Zhou, “Recent Advances in Photonic Crystal Surface Emitting Lasers”, IEEE J. Select. Topic. Quantum. Electron. 31, 1502408 (2025).

Bio:  Dr. Weidong Zhou is currently a Janet and Mike Greene Professor and Director of the Center for Research and Innovation in Semiconductors and Photonics (CRISP) at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA). He obtained his BS and ME degrees from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. He obtained his PhD degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.   Dr. Zhou has authored and co-authored over 400 journal publications and conference presentations, including over 100 invited conference talks. Dr. Zhou and his group have made significant contributions in photonic crystal metasurface optoelectronics, especially photonic crystal lasers and PCSELs, for integrated silicon photonics and high-power laser systems. Dr. Zhou is a fellow of Optica and SPIE, and a senior member of IEEE.