With the flourish development of artificial intelligence, lasing with tailored features generated by photonic crystal lasers play a more important part in the field of optics and in potential applications such as self-control, LiDAR, telecommunications, and, holography imaging. Here, a self-steering lasing emission from a defect-mode sandwich-like structure consisting of photomechanical deformed azobenzene cholesteric liquid crystal elastomer is demonstrated. The output single-mode lasing emission can be fast steered by UV irradiation to a widely angular tuning range of approximately ±60° with an excitation threshold of Eth = 7.9 ± 0.5 μJ cm−2 per pulse. We envision that this flexible, portable and durable sandwich-like laser system with controllable lasing beam steering and mechanical robustness will open a gate for self-driving vehicle, self-sustained machines and optical devices with the core feature of photomechanical transduction.
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