Robust organic lasers comprising glassy-cholesteric pentafluorene doped with a red-emitting oligofluorene

Doped with a red-emitting oligofluorene, fluid and glassy cholesteric liquid crystal (CLC) films are characterized by similar lasing thresholds and efficiencies. With picosecond excitations the output from a glassy CLC laser is temporally stable, but that from a fluid CLC laser decays with time. The difference in stability is attributable to external perturbations on supramolecular structure in the fluid but not the solid state, such as heating through optical pumping, light-induced pitch dilation, and laser-induced flow.