Hybrid organic-inorganic semiconductor polariton condensates and transistors

半导体中光与物质的相互作用是我们这个科技驱动的世界的核心。当半导体发出或吸收光时，光子和电子之间的能量交换就会发生离散事件。然而，现在有可能创造出光学和电子系统，其中光子和激发态电子在一个光学微腔中混合在一起，能量在它们之间进行相干交换，形成全新的粒子，被称为“极化电子”，而不是这种离散的“跳跃”。当在一个腔中产生足够数量的极化子时，它们形成一种被称为极化子凝聚体的相干态。这种凝聚体是一种“液体光”，并显示出量子性质，尽管凝聚体可以相当大(直径几十微米)。这些奇异的物体不仅仅是学术上的好奇：它们可以被用来作为一种全新类型的电子设备的基础，这种电子设备被称为“极化电子学”。通过光泵浦产生极化子凝聚体的简单易行，最近导致了许多极化子装置的原型展示，包括低阈值激光、干涉仪和晶体管。后者几乎完全基于III-V半导体，提供了优良的材料质量，尽管由于此类材料中激子结合能很小，主要限制在低温操作。有机微腔，由于其非常强大的激子，更具弹性，并被证明支持室温极化子凝聚，同时受苦于缺乏有效的电子注入。有机和无机极化电子学领域的最新技术已经成熟，其中两类半导体材料在光学微腔中的杂化有望提供一系列新的物理和潜在的器件。在Aranovich等人的开创性工作中，发现混合了两种简并激子的有机-无机混合结构--即Frenkel激子和Wannier-Mott激子--可以结合许多理想的性质，如有利于极化-极化相互作用的大激子玻尔半径和允许在室温下工作的大振子强度和巨大的光学非线性。在拟议的项目中，我们将探索包含无机和有机半导体的混合微腔中极化子的新基本物理，并旨在开发利用杂交优势的全新一代混合极化子系统。为了应对这项研究的挑战，我们建议在德国和俄罗斯联邦之间在极化电子领域建立特别强大的学术伙伴关系。该联盟汇集了关键质量、互补的专业知识和无与伦比的实验设备，这些都是点燃混合极化电子学新领域并在快速发展的量子和光子工程领域取得突破性成果所必需的。

Interaction of light with matter in semiconductors is central to our technology-driven world. When a semiconductor emits or absorbs light, a discrete event of energy exchange between a photon and an electron occurs. Instead of such discrete ‘jumps’ however, it is now possible to create optical and electronic systems in which photons and excited-state electrons are mixed together in an optical microcavity and energy is exchanged between them coherently, forming entirely new particles called ‘polaritons’. When a sufficient number of polaritons is generated in a cavity, they form a coherent state called a polariton condensate. Such condensates are a form of ‘liquid light’ and display quantum properties, even though the condensate can be quite large (tens of microns in diameter). These exotic objects are not simply an academic curiosity: they can be used as the basis for an entirely new type of electronics, called ‘polaritonics’. The ease of creating polariton condensates through optical pumping has recently led to demonstrations of numerous prototype polaritonic devices including low threshold lasers, interferometers, and transistors. The latter are almost entirely based on III-V semiconductors that offer superior material quality, despite being mainly restricted to low-temperature operation due to small exciton binding energies in such materials. Organic microcavities, owing to their very robust excitons, are much more resilient and are shown to support room-temperature polariton condensates, whilst suffering from the lack of efficient electrical injection. The state-of-the-art in both the fields of organic and inorganic polaritonics has now reached the maturity, wherein hybridization of the two classes of semiconductor materials in optical microcavities promises a whole gamut of new physics and potential devices.In the pioneering work by Agranovich et al., it was shown that hybrid organic-inorganic structures mixing two degenerate excitonic species – namely, Frenkel excitons and Wannier-Mott excitons – can combine many desirable properties, such as large exciton Bohr radii favoring polariton-polariton interaction and large oscillator strengths allowing operation at room temperature and deliver giant optical non-linearities. In the proposed project, we will explore the new fundamental physics of polaritons in hybrid microcavities containing both inorganic and organic semiconductors and aim at developing an entirely new generation of hybrid polaritonic systems that harness the benefits of hybridization. To address the challenges of this research, we propose an exceptionally strong academic partnership in the field of polaritonics between Germany and the Russian Federation. The consortium brings together the critical mass, complementary expertise, and unmatched experimental facilities necessary to ignite the new field of hybrid polaritonics and deliver ground-breaking results in the rapidly developing areas of quantum and photonic engineering.