Towards Highly Efficient Polymer Fiber Laser Sources for Integrated Photonic Sensors

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the development of highly efficient, tunable polymer fiber lasers suitable for integration into Lab-on-a-Chip devices, advancing optical sources for biological and medical sensing applications.

Contribution

It introduces a new approach to polymer fiber lasers with high efficiency, tunability, and output energy, optimized for integrated photonic sensors in Lab-on-a-Chip systems.

Findings

Achieved high output energies of 1.65mJ

Demonstrated slope efficiencies of 56%

Showed broad spectral tunability over tens of nanometers

Abstract

Lab-on-a-Chip (LoC) devices combining microfluidic analyte provision with integrated optical analysis are highly desirable for several applications in biological oder medical sciences. While the microfluidic approach is already broadly adressed, yet some work needs to be done regarding the integrated optics, especially provision of highly integrable laser sources. Polymer optical fiber (POF) lasers represent an alignment-free, rugged and flexible technology platform. Additionally, POFs are intrinsically compatible to polymer microfluidic devices. Home-made Rhodamine B (RB) doped POFs were characterized with experimental and numerical parameter studies on their lasing potential. High output energies of 1.65mJ, high slope efficiencies of 56% and 50%-lifetimes of < 900 k shots were extracted from RB:POFs. Furthermore, RB:POFs show broad spectral tunability over several tens of nanometers. A route to optimize polymer fiber lasers is revealed providing functionality for a broad range of LoC devices. Spectral tunability, high efficiencies and output energies enable a broad field of LoC applications.