Electrically driven lasing from a dual-cavity perovskite device

Solution-processed semiconductor lasers promise lightweight, wearable and scalable optoelectronic applications. Among the gain media for solution-processed lasers, metal halide perovskites stand out as an exceptional class because of their ability to achieve wavelength-adjustable, low-threshold lasing under optical pumping1–8. Despite the progress in this field, electrically driven lasing from perovskite semiconductors remains a critical challenge. Here we demonstrate an electrically driven perovskite laser, constructed by vertically integrating a low-threshold single-crystal perovskite microcavity sub-unit with a high-power microcavity perovskite LED (PeLED) sub-unit. Under pulsed electrical excitation, the dual-cavity perovskite device shows a minimum lasing threshold of 92 A cm−2 (average threshold: 129 A cm−2, at about 22 °C, in air), which is an order of magnitude lower than that of state-of-the-art electrically driven organic lasers9,10. Key to this demonstration is the integrated dual-cavity device architecture, which allows the microcavity PeLED sub-unit to deliver directional emission into the single-crystal perovskite microcavity sub-unit (at a coupling efficiency of about 82.7%) to establish the lasing action. An operational half-life (T50) of 1.8 h (6.4 × 104 voltage pulses at 10 Hz) is achieved, outperforming the stability of electrically pumped organic lasers9,10. The dual-cavity perovskite laser can be rapidly modulated at a bandwidth of 36.2 MHz, indicating its potential for data transmission and computational applications.