Fig. 5: Development of electrically injected plasmonic and metallic cavity nanolasers.

LT: low temperature; RT: room temperature. a First electrically injected metallic cavity nanolaser operating in dielectric mode27. b First electrically injected nanolaser operating in metaldielectric-metal plasmonic gap mode34. c, d Nanolasers operating above liquid nitrogen temperature129,130. e, f Demonstrations of the first room-temperature operation of electrically injected metallic cavity nanolasers66,125. Notice that except in b, all of these metallic cavity lasers operate in dielectric modes.