Random lasing in composites of CdSe/CdZnS colloidal quantum wells and silica nanoparticles

Colloidal quantum wells (CQWs) are a new type of atomic flat semiconductor nanocrystals, which present excellent opportunities as optical gain materials owing to their ultranarrow emission linewidth, tunable emission wavelength, suppressed Auger effect, and large gain cross-section. Here we synthesized monodispersed silica nanospheres and CdSe(4ML)/CdZnS core/shell CQWs. We observed random lasing by optically pumping the composites of CdSe(4ML)/CdZnS core/shell CQWs and silica nanoparticle scattering layer. The random lasing ranges from 615 nm to 625 nm with a threshold of 0.55 mJ cm−2. Fourier analysis reveals that sufficient Rayleigh scattering is the primary reason for the low threshold in the spatial frequency spectrum of the random laser. Our findings suggest that CQWs can serve as an efficient optical gain medium for random lasing, enabling various applications such as speckle-free laser imaging, random number generation for secure communication, chemical and biological sensing, high brightness and energy-efficient lighting, and label-free bioimaging.