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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:

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

Widest & Fastest Tunable 1310nm VCSEL to-date:

First Tunable 1060nm VCSEL:

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

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

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