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Abstract
We successfully fabricated laser dye (Rh6G)-doped lamellar, hexagonal, and cubic mesostructured SiO2 waveguides with a combined method of inorganic/organic co-assembly and soft-lithography. These mesostructured SiO2 waveguide arrays were made on low-refractive index mesoporous SiO2 clad films (the upper cladding is air), and waveguiding was confirmed for all samples. When pumping the waveguides with an excitation light at normal incidence, they exhibited a broad emission peak (yellow in color) below certain pumping intensity (pumping threshold), and above the threshold a sharp emission peak (orange in color) was observed from the end of the waveguides. The gain-narrowing is attributed to amplified spontaneous emission that results from the homogenous distribution of highly doped dye molecules (up to 0.8 mol%) within the organized mesochannels of the arrays. The pumping threshold values for the respective mesostructured waveguides are different from each other, increasing in the order of lamellar < hexagonal < cubic mesostructure.