Technology | Praevium Research

Widely Tunable Vertical Cavity Lasers

Praevium Research has developed record widely tunable Vertical Cavity Lasers (VCSELs) with continuous mode-hop-free tuning ranges of up to 170nm, all on a wavelength extensible platform proven from 850nm up to 3.3µm. MEMS VCSELs provide an ideal source for OCT, spectroscopy, and high resolution machine vision, as the combination of short cavity length and small mirror mass enable extremely high wavelength sweep rates needed for real-time volumetric imaging. The single-mode nature of these sources results in extremely long coherence lengths (≥200 meters), enabling long-range 3-D imaging in addition to high-speed ophthalmic & endoscopic imaging.

Our 1050nm and 1310nm MEMS VCSELs stand out as the premier high speed tunable laser source. In conjunction with commercial partner Thorlabs and cutting edge research academic partner MIT, these devices are matched with Praevium-designed wide-band optical amplifier (BOA) to develop state of the art swept-source optical coherence tomography (SS-OCT) systems commercially available through ThorLabs.

Widest tuning electrically-pumped 1060nm MEMS-VCSEL, producing high-quality ophthalmic images:

Wideband Electrically Pumped 1050-nm MEMS-Tunable VCSEL for Ophthalmic Imaging (IEEE: Journal of Lightwave Technology, Vol. 33, Is. 16, Feb. 2 2015)

Tuning spectrum of the prototype 1550nm MEMS-VCSEL with 170nm span.

Widest & Fastest Tunable 1310nm VCSEL to-date:

A Clean Sweep for MEMS-VCSELs
(View at IET: Electronics Letters feature: Vol. 48, Is. 14, 2012)
High-sweep-rate 1310 nm MEMS-VCSEL with 150 nm continuous tuning range (IET: Electronics Letters, Vol. 48, Is. 14, 2012)

First Tunable 1060nm VCSEL:

Rapidly swept, ultra-widely-tunable 1060 nm MEMS-VCSELs (IET: Electronics Letters vol. 48, issue 21, 2012)

Schematic of the mechanically-tunable vertical-cavity laser (MEMS-VCSEL).
The device is less than 1mm across.

Optical spectrum of widely-tuned VCSEL, showing lasing over 150 nm around 1310 nm.

World's First 3.3um CW VCSEL

Praevium Research in conjunction with Thorlabs under the MONITOR ARPA-E program built the world's first room temperature continuous wave VCSEL at 3.3um

Find our Broad-band SLED sources at Thorlabs:

Spectrum of Thorlabs dual-SLED source, with 200nm of FWHM Bandwidth.

State-of-the-art Light Sources for high resolution & meter-range 3-D imaging:

1065nm and 1310nm MEMS tunable VCSEL light source technology for OCT imaging (SPIE)
MEMS tunable VCSEL light source for ultrahigh speed 60kHz – 1MHz axial scan rate and long range centimeter class OCT imaging (SPIE Proceedings #8213)
High precision, high accuracy ultralong range swept source OCT using VCSEL light source (Optics Letters)