| Summary: | This thesis describes the work carried out under HYPIX, a collaborative research project aimed at developing hybrid organic/inorganic optoelectronic devices, with particular focus given to imaging systems used in the optical pumping of organic polymer gain media. State-of-the-art generations of inorganic light-emitting diodes are presented, along with an overview of the evolution of such devices over the years. A brief outlook is also given on current advances in organic semiconductor gain materials research, as well as laser cavity design. The challenges in designing an optical system capable of pumping organic materials with highly divergent light sources are highlighted, together with the methods that were used to overcome them. Various attempts at optically pumping several organic materials are detailed, highlighting the importance of combining several factors such as energy density, pump spot size and pump pulse duration all at once in order to achieve lasing in this new type of hybrid device. Possible improvements which could in the future lead to the first indirectly electrically pumped organic semiconductor laser are listed. Secondary experiments are also described, covering the proof-of-concept use of computer- controlled, inorganic micro-scale light sources as a spatially-resolving spectrometer for organic polymer targets. A deviation of under 10 % from absorbance values calculated for the samples using a commercial spectrometer is shown.
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