Tunable Broadband QCL System

Tender description

The University of Southampton's Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) is looking to purchase a tunable mid-IR laser system that can be used in the frame of the MISSION EPSRC programme grant. The ORC already possesses a tunable laser systems that cover the 6-12 m spectral range, however it does not operate in CW regime, has low output optical power and it has no beam pointing control. The MISSION is a flagship project with the main objective to demonstrate medical and environmental sensors based on absorption spectroscopy using silicon photonics platforms. It is a multi-institutional, multi-disciplinary project which requires a widely tunable mid-IR source with large CW output power and excellent beam pointing control. Since we are developing various sensing platforms it is crucial we get such a source to be able to efficiently test our sensors. The system will be used for research and will be based in Building 53 (Mountbatten building at Highfield campus). <br /><br />The OCR are using in-plane coupling and therefore the laser beam divergence needs to be minimal to ease coupling of MIR light to Si/Ge waveguides. Currently, a great deal of time is spent when change QCL modules and coupling different wavelengths to the Si/Ge waveguides. This significantly slows down our experiments. A small beam divergence would enable much easier coupling and more efficient data collection and analysis.