Education

Laser Diode Drivers for Universities and Academic Institutions

Research groups in national laboratories, universities and non government organizations do the work that eventually turns into products. Directed Energy supplies laser diode drivers and application support to those groups, from a single OEM module on a student bench to an integrated rack system running an experiment for months. The goal is simple: the driver should be the part of the setup you stop thinking about.

University and Academic Research Applications

• LiDAR and optical rangingRanging experiments need short, repeatable current pulses because range resolution follows pulse width and range precision follows timing stability. Drivers with rise and fall times in the low nanoseconds, such as the PCO-7111 at 2 ns to 3.5 ns, are the usual starting point for a teaching or research ranging setup.
• Photoacoustic imagingPhotoacoustic work fires an optical pulse into tissue or a phantom and listens for the ultrasound generated by thermoelastic expansion. Signal amplitude tracks optical energy per pulse, so amplitude drift in the driver shows up directly as contrast drift in the reconstructed image.
• Additive manufacturingLaser based additive processes need controlled energy delivery per unit area, sustained over long builds. Quasi CW and CW capable drivers such as the PCO-6511, rated to 10 A with 10 V compliance, cover the lower power end of this work on a lab budget.
• Time of flight systemsTime of flight measurement converts a timing interval into distance, so any shot to shot variation in when the optical pulse actually leaves the diode becomes measurement error. External trigger inputs let the driver be synchronized to the same clock as the detection electronics.
• Refraction and diffusion studiesMeasuring how light bends and scatters through a medium calls for a stable source and the ability to vary one parameter at a time. A driver with independently adjustable amplitude, width and repetition rate lets a student isolate the variable under study.
• Laser spectroscopyDiode laser wavelength moves with junction temperature and therefore with drive current, which is exactly why spectroscopy groups care about current regulation. A true current source holds amplitude as the diode forward voltage changes, instead of letting the operating point wander.

Products That Work for You

• Open frame modulesAn open frame driver is a bare PCB, or a PCB on a heatsink, that mounts directly into a student built assembly. It is the least expensive way into the product line and it keeps the connection to the diode short, which preserves the pulse edge.
• Enclosed modulesEnclosed modules put the same circuit in a housing with defined connectors and mounting. In a shared lab where several people touch the same equipment, the enclosure is worth what it costs.
• Integrated benchtop and rack mount systemsBenchtop instruments such as the PCX-7401 add an internal pulse engine and Ethernet, RS232 and USB remote control, so an experiment can be scripted and left to run. Rack mount versions of the higher power units suit a permanent installation rather than a bench that gets rebuilt every term.
• Pulsed driversPulsed drivers cover the short pulse, high peak current end of the range, where the diode is driven well above its CW rating for a very short time. The PCO-6131 reaches 125 A at 20 V compliance with 30 ns edges and repetition rates to 500 kHz.
• CW and quasi CW driversContinuous and quasi continuous drivers trade edge speed for sustained output and thermal capability. The PCM-7140 family runs from 1 A up to 200 A with pulse widths from microseconds through to full duty cycle, which suits material processing and long integration experiments.

Support and Expertise So You Can Stay Focused

• Application support from driver specialistsDirected Energy engineers work on laser diode drivers full time, which means they have already seen most of the failure modes a new group is about to discover. Sending your load parameters and pulse requirements before you order usually saves a semester of debugging.
• Writing and publishingReviewers ask how the source was driven, and a catalog driver with published specifications is easier to describe in a methods section than a circuit somebody built two graduate students ago. It also makes the work reproducible by another group.
• TeachingEconomical modules let a class run real experiments in small groups rather than watching one demonstration setup. Students see current sources, compliance voltage and pulse shaping behave the way the lecture said they would.
• ResearchLong running experiments need equipment that behaves the same in month six as it did in week one. Current regulation and defined thermal limits are what make that stability possible.
• Science and experimentationExploratory work changes direction, so the useful driver is the one with room in its operating envelope for the experiment you have not designed yet. Adjustable amplitude, width and repetition rate all buy that room.

Tell us the diode or array you are driving, the current and compliance voltage it needs, and the pulse width and repetition rate your experiment calls for. We will point you at the closest standard driver and say plainly if nothing in the catalog fits.