Feasibility of the solar-pumped fullerene-oxygen-iodine laser (Sun-light FOIL)

The feasibility of the optically pumped (in particular, solar-pumped) fullerene-oxygen-iodine laser (FOIL) is considered. The singlet oxygen is assumed to be formed through the interaction of molecular oxygen with a mixture of (both lower and higher) fullerenes in a photogenerated triplet metastable state. The estimates based on a photokinetic model show that the solar-pumped FOIL efficiency can reach several tens of percent. The singlet-oxygen yield resulting from the interaction of optical pumping radiation with fullerenes in solutions is studied both theoretically and experimentally. As the optical pumping, we used laser radiation at 532 nm and broad-band emission of a lamp with a solarlike spectrum.