Zinc Oxide Nanolaser: Photoluminescence spectroscopy and optical pumping of zinc oxide nanowires

This Master's thesis is a continuation of the specialization project I did during the spring of 2011. The goal of said project was to set up a system for UV-photoluminescence experiments in the Nanophotonics laboratory at the Department of Electronics and Telecommunications at NTNU, and conduct photoluminescence spectroscopy measurements on different zinc oxide nanostructures, including GaAs/AlGaAs/ZnO core/multishell nanowires. This thesis involves studying zinc oxide nanowires using both a continuous wave and pulsed ultraviolet laser light, and the final goal is to optically excite these nanowires so they achieve lasing. Using a Tsunami Ti:sapph mode-locked tunable laser and a flexible harmonic generator, laser pulses with a pulse duration of 2 ps could be generated at wavelengths around 300 nm, at a power of around 5 mW. At this power, some of the wires showed possible signs of optical gain, but since it was not possible to apply more power to the wires, this could not be confirmed. If there had be enough time, both low temperature measurements and time-resolved spectroscopy, using a streak camera, would have been performed