University of Ottawa relies on the BEAMAGE series to measure laser profiles in the development of receiver chips

CASE STUDY

Application: Development of receiver chips for Power-Over-Fiber applications

Measurement type: Laser beam profiling

Customer goals

The customer is a lab housed at the University of Ottawa and is Canada's premier solar cell characterization research facility. They focus on high-performance devices and specialize in solar energy, optoelectronics, and photonics.

They aim to research new photonic nanostructures and integrated devices for the industry. They published between 4 and 9 articles per year, so they are quite successful.

In this particular project, the customer was developing receiver chips for Power-Over-Fiber applications. They used to work with 1310 nm but are creating a new system at 1550 nm. This project was for Photonic Power Converters. These converters are often included in optical communications systems for simultaneous power and data transmission.

Challenges

They want to characterize the efficiency of receiver chips that they develop at two different wavelengths and at different laser power densities. Their laser sources are at 1310 nm and 1550 nm, focused using a 2’’ diameter lens. To obtain different power densities, they can vary the beam size on a sample from 0.5 mm to 10 mm by modifying the distance with the lens. The measurement they need to calculate power density is the beam size at the sample plane for each test. They currently use the knife-edge method to measure their beam size, which is very time-consuming, and would like to use a camera-based beam profiler for faster data acquisition.

Their setup poses three challenges for camera-based beam profiling:

1. CCD and CMOS sensors respond to Vis-NIR wavelengths, but in this case the lasers are outside this range
2. The sensor must be large to be able to measure their 10 mm beam
3. The beam profiler must be slim to fit inside their crowded experimental setup

Gentec-EO’s solutions

After a thorough discussion with the lab’s post-doctoral researcher in charge of this project, Gentec-EO’s laser beam measurement experts identified the following solution for them: the BEAMAGE-4M-IR to measure the source at 1550 nm and the BEAMAGE-4M with the B3-IR-Filter for the 1310 nm source.

Even if they have two camera models, having the same software and hardware helps because they only have to build one support for the camera and it will fit both models. Our 11.3 mm sensor is large enough to accommodate their 10 mm beams. Many of our competitors have smaller sensors that are smaller than 10 mm. The camera is also small enough to fit at the sensor location.

Results

With this measurement solution, the researchers were able to confidently complete this research project, make a contribution to the advancement of the photonics science, and maybe even publish another academic paper that will add to the notoriety of their laboratory.

This customer highly values accuracy in the research and was able to find that high accuracy level with Gentec-EO. Read more about our level of accuracy here.

The customer particularly enjoyed the small footprint of the camera while having a big enough sensor to profile their entire beam. This camera is also much faster than the knife-edge method they were using before.

Moreover, they can use this equipment regularly for every new sample they are creating. They are also able to use the beam profiler for other projects, not only with this test bench.

WE CAN HELP YOU TOO

Gentec Electro-Optics specializes in laser beam measurement and analysis. With an outstanding 50-year track record of innovation, developing and providing state-of-the-art technologies to the laser market, Gentec-EO has become The Expert of the laser beam measurement field.

Gentec-EO offers the broadest range of off-the-shelf and custom laser beam measurement solutions. Challenge us with your laser specs and system requirements and we'll come up with the measurement solution that meets your needs.

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