Abstract

The use of organic wave-guide lasers based on dye-doped polymers has attracted much attention over the last decade for their applications in integrated photonics. These systems assure wide tunability, high efficiency and easiness of production. A major drawback of these devices is their limited operational lifetime, and any realistic application passes for extending it. Dye degradation is mainly caused by thermal and/or chemical (photooxidation) processes and different approaches must be followed to overcome them while keeping the desired efficiency in the final device. It is known that an improvement in the polymer thermal conductivity reduces dye thermal degradation due to a more efficient dye-to-polymer heat transfer [1]. On the other hand, the chemical degradation is avoided by using matrices less permeable to oxygen, which is responsible for the dye photooxidation.

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