The development of small, power-efficient lasers has been commercially quite important and has had a significant impact on modern life. Semiconductor nanowires are promising for further down-scaling the physical dimensions of lasers and so have attracted substantial interest. Over the last 15 years, nanowire lasers have been widely studied in various material systems, with room-temperature lasing being quite readily achieved in II-VI and III-N semiconductor nanowires, and more recently in III-V semiconductor nanowires. III-V semiconductors are the most widely used materials in semiconductor lasers today and so the development of III-V semiconductor nanowires is expected to have technologically significant outcomes.

In this final PhD seminar I will present the design and demonstration of various III-V semiconductor nanowire lasers, namely, GaAs nanowire lasers, GaAs/AlGaAs multi-quantum-well nanowire lasers and InP nanowire lasers. The design criteria to obtain low threshold lasing and the growth of high quantum efficiency nanowires will firstly be explained. I will then present experimental results showing low-threshold room-temperature lasing from each of these devices. I will also discuss various mode characterisation techniques and apply these techniques to characterise the lasing mode from the various devices. Lastly, I will discuss the next steps forward for practical utilisation of the nanowire lasers developed in this work.