Room-Temperature Lasing in a Low-Loss Tamm Plasmon Cavity

Optical Tamm structures offer great possibilities for the development of new optoelectronic devices ranging from polarized laser sources to plasmon generators. Indeed, thanks to the patterning of a thin metallic film alone, microscale confinement of light is achieved, which constitutes a very easy and flexible way to make confined lasers. Here, we report on room-temperature lasing of a Tamm structure, based on an original geometry with enhanced quality factor. In this so-called Super Tamm structure, a low-index dielectric layer is inserted between a silver film and an AlGaAs/AlAs distributed Bragg reflector while keeping the mode confinement at the metallic/dielectric interface. Numerical simulations of this structure show Q-factors up to 6500. Room-temperature lasing is achieved with this new architecture, as demonstrated by the nonlinear emission intensity increase and the spectral and emission-diagram narrowing. This result is a determinant step toward the realization of useful Tamm laser devices.