Manufacturers of life science instruments, such as flow cytometry, are increasingly moving away from separate, single-laser lasers to laser engines, which are compact, customizable, integrated components that provide a shaped focused beam in an application-specific form.
The laser produces a beam of light, either pulsed or continuous wave light. Almost everyone knows this. Life sciences mean a huge market for CW lasers. But in reality, no instrument or application in the life sciences actually uses the raw beam produced by the laser. They focus, shape, combine it with other laser beams, couple it to an optical fiber, modulate it (on/off), etc., as needed for specific tasks, including blood counts, biopsy microscopy, gene sequencing, and more.
Now, some of the modulation work of these laser beams has become quite tricky. For example, a skilled, experienced laser technician can take several hours to couple a single laser into a high-performance fiber. For systems that require multiple laser wavelengths, it can take days of painstaking alignment.
Galaxy is not far away
It may seem obvious now, but it was a revolutionary idea when Coherent set out to tackle this challenge. Specifically, integrated components are provided to handle complex beam shaping modulation tasks in-house and provide laser output in the form required by the application. Along these lines, our first product was the Galaxy. It brings plug-and-play functionality to instrument OEMs and lab laser users who need to transmit multiple wavelengths in a single fiber. For the first time ever, lasers can be easily added or replaced in a system in seconds or minutes instead of hours and days, all using standard fiber connectors.
It has proven to be ideal for laboratory researchers in applications such as confocal microscopy. In such applications, researchers often want to quickly switch between different wavelengths to image different biochemical targets in the same sample. It is also suitable for OEM instrument manufacturers. They love it because it allows users to "hot-swap" lasers in the field, whether it's adding extra wavelengths, upgrading the power of specific wavelengths, or replacing a failed laser without having to return to the factory or cause customer downtime accordingly.
A multi-wavelength engine you can trust
Of course, not all life science instruments are fiber-based. Flow cytometry is a prominent example in which multiple lasers are shaped and focused by traditional (free-space) optics. So, next, we set out to use a new laser engine to meet the needs of this important application. We call this CellX because the biggest application of flow cytometry is immunophenotyping.
CellX offers up to four different wavelengths for users to choose from. It includes the laser itself as well as all the miniature optics needed to create a focused elliptical beam shape in a flow cytometer. Some instrument manufacturers have even combined two of these modules to obtain eight wavelengths to meet the new trend of multiparametric flow cytometry. To integrate the CellX into one of these instruments, the OEM user simply removes the sleek-looking lid to see a set of screw adjustments, allowing independent control of the focus and position of each beam.
Looking to the future
What's next? How about combining the benefits of optical fiber with the performance of free-space optics? What does this mean? One of the great things about fiber optics is that it's always stable, it's just a piece of glass. Stability has proven to be a major issue in the field for some OEMs using free-space optics. Depending on how their instruments are handled and used, they may need a service visit every 6 months just to realign the laser beam. This is because traditional optics holders consist of metal pieces and small screws, which at some point inevitably deviate from the precise alignment.
Coherent has a wide range of laser products that can be used in a variety of demanding applications, including industrial production lines. Because they are built using PermalignTM technology, they can often provide thousands of hours of maintenance-free operation. With this approach, Coherent does not use mechanical optics holders, but instead aligns and glues each optical element in place at all times. This provides excellent ease of use and reliability, as there are no adjustments to be made and there are no misalignments.
An important fact – simplicity is key when using multiple lasers in any application, and Coherent Laser Engines are designed to make that happen.