A tunable 3D optofluidic waveguide dye laser via two centrifugal Dean flow streams

This paper presents a tunable optofluidic waveguide dye laser utilizing two centrifugal Dean flows. The centrifugal Dean flow increases the light confinement of the dye laser by shaping a three-dimensional (3D) liquid waveguide from curved microchannels. The active medium with the laser dye is disso...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Lab on a chip 2011-09, Vol.11 (18), p.3182-3187
Main Authors: Yang, Y, Liu, A Q, Lei, L, Chin, L K, Ohl, C D, Wang, Q J, Yoon, H S
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Dye lasers
Equipment Design
Lasers
Lasers, Dye
Liquids
Mechanical Phenomena
Microcavities
Microfluidic Analytical Techniques - instrumentation
Microscopy, Confocal
Rhodamines - chemistry
Stimulated emission
Three dimensional
Tuning
Waveguides
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Summary:This paper presents a tunable optofluidic waveguide dye laser utilizing two centrifugal Dean flows. The centrifugal Dean flow increases the light confinement of the dye laser by shaping a three-dimensional (3D) liquid waveguide from curved microchannels. The active medium with the laser dye is dissolved in the liquid core and pumped with an external pump laser to produce stimulated emission. The laser's Fabry-Pérot microcavity is formed with a pair of aligned gold-coated fiber facets to amplify the fluorescent emission. The advantage of the 3D optofluidic waveguide dye laser is its higher efficiency, thus to obtain lasing at a reduced threshold (60%) with higher output energy. The demonstrated slope efficiency is at least 3-fold higher than its traditional two-dimensional equivalent. In addition, the laser output energy can be varied on demand by tuning the flow rates of the two flows. This technique provides a versatile platform for high potential applications microfluidic biosensor and bioanalysis.
ISSN:1473-0197
1473-0189
DOI:10.1039/c1lc20435a