Gold substrate-induced single-mode lasing of GaN nanowires

We demonstrate a method for mode-selection by coupling a GaN nanowire laser to an underlying gold substrate. Multimode lasing of GaN nanowires is converted to single-mode behavior following placement onto a gold film. A mode-dependent loss is generated by the absorbing substrate to suppress multiple transverse-mode operation with a concomitant increase in lasing threshold of only ∼13. This method provides greater flexibility in realizing practical single-mode nanowire lasers and offers insight into the design of metal-contacted nanoscale optoelectronics. © 2012 American Institute of Physics.