Toward polariton lasing in a zinc oxide microcavity: Design and preliminary results

We report the observation of the strong coupling regime in a half ZnO cavity. A large Rabi splitting of 130 meV is seen as well as a bottleneck in the exciton-polariton relaxation due to a shorter cavity-photon lifetime. The deposition of the top mirror is expected to yield a Q factor of 620 and the structure would then fulfill the main criteria required for room temperature polariton lasing to occur. This conclusion is supported by simulations based on the solution of Boltzmann equations leading to a polariton density threshold of 1016 cm-3.