Peachtree City, GA, June 24, 2004--Furukawa America Inc. introduced a 488-nm second-harmonic-generation (SHG) blue laser for bioinstrumentation applications including DNA sequencers, fluorescent microscope cell analysis, and other biomedical analytical equipment. The laser is another entry in the burgeoning field of small solid-state (usually semiconductor-based) lasers designed to replace argon-ion lasers.
The FITEL-brand blue laser is manufactured by the Furukawa Electric Co. Ltd. (Tokyo, Japan), a large supplier of semiconductor pumping laser diodes for the telecommunications industry. Furukawa Electric deploys these same technologies in the 488-nm SHG blue laser, using semiconductor laser and wavelength-conversion devices to meet the specific needs of biomedical use (meaning the replacement of large, power-hungry argon-ion lasers with small, efficient semiconductor-based lasers whenever possible).
A fiber-Bragg-grating (FBG)-stabilized 976-nm semiconductor laser and polarization-maintaining fiber create the initial light source. The FBG reflectivity is carefully tuned to control the longitudinal mode of laser oscillation to achieve stable wavelength conversion with the SHG device. This configuration reduces the number of components required and increases reliability. The light output is coupled to a single-mode fiber to produce a Gaussian beam with excellent pointing stability. Laser output power from a single-mode pigtail is 20 mW; power stability is better than +/-1%; and the beam quality M2 is better than 1.1. Pointing stability is better than 3 microradians (smaller than the measurement limit of the setup used to measure it), while the power consumption is under 18 W. The laser is 127x177x42.7 mm in size.