Tunable Diode Lasers

Tunable diode lasers are increasing

their market penetration via rapid
evolution a new generation
of products every year or so.
Bob Shine and
Tim Day, New Focus
At the recent Photonics West and
Optical Fiber Conferences, companies presented many new products,
ranging from mechanical products to
instruments to complex laser systems. As a product engineer, there is
nothing quite like the feeling of
standing in the booth, talking to potential customers about the product
Youve designed or built. But the real
success happens when customers buy
the product
Customers decide to buy for a
number of reasons. The product may
let them do something that was difficult or even impossible before. Or
the product might make their experiments simpler by creating a betterdesigned or easier-to-use instrument
than was previously available. For this
to happen, the product must clearly
satisfy a real need of the customer,
the product should have some sustainable competitive advantage over
other companies offerings, and the
company should be able to make a
profit by selling the product. This last
item is important since the product
can survive only if it can be justified
economically both to the customer
and the manufacturer.
The tunable diode laser is a product that has satisfied all of the
above requirements to become a
successful product. Since the first
commercial introduction of this type
of laser about five years ago, it has
found numerous applications, ranging
from telecommunications to spectroscopy to metrology. While each
of these applications places slightly
different requirements on the laser
and the user interface, each of them
requires a narrow-linewidth, continuously tunable, reliable source. (As examples, Figures 1 and 2 depict two
somewhat different system that will

be described in greater
detail in upcoming sections.)
The technical capabilities and features of
the tunable diode laser
played a major role in
the success of the product. But the ease-of
use of the product also
contributed to its success. For example, a
room-temperature,
2m tunable diode laser
was recently used by researchers at Stanford University and
Focused Research to obtain a survey
spectrum of CO 2 in a matter of
minutes. With this type of technology these researchers can imagine a
very sensitive diode-laser-based sensor for combustion monitoring.

Some History

Before the tunable diode laser was

introduced, the workhorse of the
tunable laser market was the liquid
dye laser. This laser was developed in
the 1960s and was used in a number
of fundamental discoveries in spectroscopy. Different dyes allowed users to cover a wide spectral region.
However, the dye laser had a number
of drawbacks, such as the need for
an expensive pump laser and the inconvenience of using and changing
the liquid dyes. The Ti:sapphire laser
was developed in the late 1980s and
offered a solid-state replacement for

Figure 1. (top) The Vortex laser (New Focus newest) is built to the customers
specific wavelength specification and offers robust, narrow-linewidth source for
atomec spectroscopy, environmental
monitoring, and metrology applications.
Figure 2. (below) Atomic absorption
monitor based on a New Focus Vortex
tunable laser and built by Orca Photonics.
This system was designed to monitor barium deposition rates and has been deployed with an industrial customer.

the dye laser in the 600- to 1000-nm

range. But the Ti:sapphire laser still
required an expensive pump laser and
water cooling, yet did not directly
offer the wavelength diversity
(roughly 350 to 1200 nm) of the dye
laser.
At the same time, semiconductor
diode lasers were also widely available. A diode laser can be tuned over
its large gain spectrum by adjusting

angle of the mirror which selects a unique diffracted wavelength. The reflected zero
order from the diffraction
grating has constant direction
and forms the output beam.
These external cavity designs
yield continuous tuning over
the wide gain curve of the
diode laser element with a
very narrow linewidth!
The tuning range depends on
the gain element used in the
Figure 3. Schematic drawing of a Littmann-Metcalf
cavity; at 630 nm the tuning
laser cavity. The angle of the tuning mirror selects
range is 10 nm, while at 1550
the output wavelength and the diffrection grating
nm the tuning range can be
acts as a frequency-selective output coupler. The
greater than 70 nm. In both
location of the pivot point is critical to obtaining
cases, the linewidth is less
continuous tuning without mode hops.
than 300 kHz. The inherent
its operating temperature. However, efficiencies in the already mature
because of the semiconductors in- diode laser market helped make the
herently broad spectrum, more than external-cavity diode laser an attractive replacement for conventional
one mode will often operate simultaneously. This produces multiple out- dye and solid-state tunable technolput wavelengths and, therefore, a ogies. As a result, these lasers have
quickly found use in the applications
broad spectral linewidth.
mentioned above.

Adapting The Diode Laser

Adding an external optical cavity

forces the diode laser to operate in a
single longitudinal mode by creating a
wavelength-dependent loss within the
laser cavity. In practice, this cavity
can be either a Littman-Metcalf or a
Littrow design two cavity designs
widely used in dye lasers. Both of
these cavities consist of a diode laser
gain element with one facet antireflection (AR) coated for very low
-4
(<10 ) reflectivity. The output from
the AR-coated facet is collimated
and directed onto a highly dispersive
diffraction grating,
In the Littrow cavity, the angle of
incidence is such that the beam is
diffracted back on itself. The grating
therefore serves as one mirror in the
cavity; tuning is achieved by controlling the angle of the grating. In the
more
common
Littman-Metcalf
design, shown in Figure 3, the grating
diffracts the light toward a tuning
mirror, which reflects the desired wavelength back towards the grating
and gain medium. This double-pass
scheme, coupled with the grazing incidence on the grating, results in a
very narrow spectral passband, and
therefore excellent wavelength sensitivity, without the use of additional
intracavity filters such as an etalon.
Tuning is achieved by adjusting the

Some Recent Applications

to 2.06 m with an output power as

high as 18 mW. The tuning curve for
this laser is shown in Figure 4.
The 2-m region and beyond Is of
particular interest in environmental
monitoring, since these wavelengths
allow access to strong ground-state
vibrational overtones of many major
pollutants. Professor Ron Hanson
and his group at the High Temperature Gasdynamics, Laboratory in the
Mechanical Engineering Department
at Stanford University (Palo Alto,
Calif) have been investigating flame
dynamics in combustion chambers
for a number of years. Their aim is to
produce a compact, reliable sensor
for CO2 and other combustion gases
to measure the efficiency of burn
chambers and incinerators. They have
focused on sensors based on diode
lasers due to the robustness, reasonable cost, and relative ease-of-use of
these lasers. Because of this focus on
compact sources, their work has always been dictated by the available
wavelengths of the diode lasers. In
the past, this constraint has limited
their sensors to detection of the relatively weak transitions associated
with vibration-rotation bands. For
comparison, the CO2 linestrengths in
the 2 m region are 70 times stronger
than at 1.58 m. This group has recently collaborated with Focused Research and has used a 2-m tunable
diode laser to obtain survey spectra
of CO2 and H 2O at various temperatures and pressures. A representative CO 2 survey spectrum is shown in
Figure 5. From these survey spectra,
they have selected a strong CO2 ab-

One of the benefits of the tunable

diode laser is the wavelength diversity that can be obtained. Almost any
wavelength that is available in a semiconductor diode laser can be made
into a tunable diode laser. The most
recent example is in the 2-m region.
In a partnership with Focused Research (a subsidiary of New Focus),
researchers at the Sarnoff Corporation (Princeton, N.J.) have demonstrated strained InGaAs/InP quantum
well lam with center wavelengths near
2.02
m.
These semiconductor
diode lasers
were
AR
coated and
placed in a
specially designed external cavity by
a team at
Focused Research. This
laser operated at room
temperature
and demonstrated con- Figure 4. Tuning range of an external-cavity tunable diode laser using
tinuous tun- a strained InGaAs/InP quantum well as the gain element. This 2-m
ing from 1.96 laser was operated at room temperature.

Figure 5. Measured survey spectra of CO2 between 4866 cm-1

(2.055 m) and 5118 cm -1 (1.954 m) taken using a room
temperature external cavity diode laser.

sorption band relatively free from

background absorptions that offers
the best opportunity for sensitive
CO 2 measurements.
As mentioned briefly earlier, each
application tends to require a different set of features. It is tempting to
continue adding features to a product in an attempt to satisfy everyone. But this approach often leads
to an overly complex and expensive
instrument that satisfies no one. In
many instances, the product with the
fewer features is the better product.
This is the approach New Focus
decided to use when designing the
newest tunable diode laser; the Vortex (Figure 1). There are a number of
applications where the full tuning
range of the tunable diode laser is
not needed or used. Examples include studying a single atom or molecule, such as rubidium, with a wellknown atomic transition. Or, as in
the work described above, an optimum wavelength can be selected after obtaining an initial survey spectrum with a broadly tunable laser and
identifying a wavelength free from
background sources. Or you could

imagine a metrology application

needing a stable, narrow-linewidth
source but with a narrow tuning range
that would allow FM measurements
to be made, something not possible
with a HeNe laser.
To satisfy such needs, New Focus
uses the same Littman-Metcalf external cavity design as in their other tunable diode lawn but removes the
coarse tuning feature.
One example of an industrial application of this laser is the collaborative work of Focused Research and
Orca Photonics Systems. Physical vapor deposition techniques such as
electron beam, sputtering and molecular-beam epitaxy (MBE) are critical to the manufacture of semiconductor devices, high-performance alloys, and high-temperature superconductors. The product yield depends
on precise control of the flux of the
different elements during manufacture. Historically, techniques such as
quartz crystal monitors, quadrupole
mass spectrometers, and ion gauges
have been used in process control
for such applications.
Atomic absorption monitoring

offers species-specific measurement

of the deposition process, including
flux velocities and spatial and temporal homogeneity. In an atomic absorption monitor, the vapor absorbs
light at the wavelength corresponding
to an atomic transition; measurement
of the incident and transmitted light
yields the evaporation rate. While
tunable diode lasers are more expensive than other light sources such as
hollow cathode lamps, the higher
spectral intensity translates into
faster data acquisition. In addition,
the lasers modulation capability is
useful for the development of a
more sensitive, drift-free sensor
(Figure 2). The narrow linewidth of a
laser source enables spatial, temporal, and velocity mapping of the flux
and creates a more complete understanding of the deposition process.
This improved understanding can
then be used to increase the process
yield.
While the pace of development in
the tunable laser field has been quite
fast, with a new laser system available almost every year, each new
generation has offered customers
additional benefits. Additional wavelengths such as the 2-m tunable
diode laser and products focused on
customers needs have allowed customers to do what they could not
have done before and provided simpler, easier-to-use tools for them.
This focus on customer needs that
continue to expand the market for
the already successful tunable diode
laser.

Bob Shine is the marketing manager and

Tim Day is the vice-president of engineering at New Focus Inc, 2630 Walsh Avenue,
Santa Clara CA 95051. Phone (408) 9808088; fax (408) 980-8883.
Originally published in Lasers &
Optronics, March 1998, pp 13-14.