Strong exciton-photon coupling with colloidal quantum dots in a high-Q bilayer microcavity

We demonstrate evanescently coupled bilayer microcavities with Q-factors exceeding 250 fabricated by a simple spin-coating process. The cavity architecture consists of a slab waveguide lying upon a low refractive index spacer layer supported by a glass substrate. For a lossless guide layer, the cavity Q depends only on the thickness of the low index spacer and in principle can reach arbitrarily high values. We demonstrate the versatility of this approach by constructing cavities with a guide layer incorporating CdSe/ZnS core/shell quantum dots, where we observe strong coupling and hybridization between the 1S(e)-1S3/2(h) and 1S(e)-2S3/2(h) exciton states mediated by the cavity photon. This technique greatly simplifies the fabrication of high-Q planar microcavities for organic and inorganic quantum dot thin films and opens up new opportunities for the study of nonlinear optical phenomena in these materials.