Lasing in a metal-clad microring resonator

Metal cladding was experimentally demonstrated to be a feasible method to further scale down the size of a microring laser. Shrinking the physical dimensions of semiconductor microring resonators has been difficult due to a large waveguide bending loss. We experimentally show that light can be better confined into a much tighter space by using the plasmonic metal structure, thereby enabling miniaturization of a microring laser.