RPMC Lasers Blog

Here at RPMC Lasers, we have over 20 years of experience helping the photonics community with their solid-state laser needs.  Over this time, we have answered a wide range of questions from both end users and system integrators, ranging from...

Introduction

Laser Diode Fundamentals: Fiber Coupling (Part 2 of 2)

Last fall, we published a blog titled “Micromachining Lasers for Anti-Counterfeiting,” where we explored how laser micromachining can be used to embed microscopic two-dimensional identification codes directly onto the item of interest.   In addition...

Laser Diode Fundamentals: Fiber Coupling (Part 1 of 2)

Microchip lasers have been around since 1989 when they were first produced at MIT’s Lincoln Labs, but it wasn’t until recently that they have become commonplace in the commercial laser market.  As such, they are still somewhat misunderstood. In this...

Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) is one of the most popular laser based atomic spectroscopy techniques on the market today.  Nowadays, LIBS is rapidly becoming an indispensable tool for elemental analysis and is generally viewed as a...

  RPMC Lasers will be exhibiting at CYTO Conference June 22-26 in Vancouver, Canada. Stop by our Booth # 414 to see what products we will be featuring.  Cytometry, is a technique in which cells suspended in a fluid flow one at a time through a focus...

Flow cytometry is a method for simultaneously analyzing multiple physical properties of an individual cell as it flows through a beam of light in a fluid stream, including the cells size and fluorescence.   In practice, flow cytometry is essentially a...

Introduction In the past RPMC has taken a look at laser diode lifetime in both a white paper titled “How to Improve Laser Diode Lifetime! Advice and Precautions on Mounting,” and an application note called “Understanding Laser Diode Lifetime.” ...

In the last installment of our Laser Diode Fundamentals series, we took a deep dive into the underlying physical properties behind the longitudinal mode structure of laser diodes.  In that blog post, we explained the advantages and disadvantages to...

Flashlamp pumped pulsed Er:YAG lasers have been widely utilized in dermatology and dentistry as an alternative to CO2 lasers, but historically continuous wave (CW) and quasi-continuous wave (QCW) Er:YAG lasers were problematic due to their unique...

Introduction  Methane (CH4) is the principal component in natural gas making up about 97% of its concentration, with the remainder consisting of small amounts of more complex hydrocarbons like ethane (C2H6), propane (C3H8), butane (C4H10), and pentane...

Micromanipulation of sub-millimeter objects is one of the more underappreciated technical challenges in modern scientific research.   To fully understand their properties, objects such as dielectric spheres, viruses, bacteria, living cells,...

Injection molding is a widely used process for rapidly mass-producing low cost highly uniform mechanical parts.  On a cursory level, it is a relatively straight forward process by which molten material (metal, glass, polymer, etc.) is injected into a...

Additive manufacturing, or as its more commonly referred - 3D printing, has revolutionized manufacturing processes over the past ten years.  This technology which was once reserved for high-end research and prototyping applications is now so...

Nearly one-third of all Americans have at least one tattoo, and of those who do roughly one-quarter of them say they regret getting it.  As a result, nearly 27 million people in the United States alone have at least one unwanted tattoo.   Based on...

On April 10th, the scientific community was elated at the release of the first-ever image of a black hole in the center of the M87 galaxy in the Virgo Cluster.  By Imaging the photon ring around the black hole shadow and utilizing the Schwarzschild...

Holography is simultaneously one of the most well-known and yet most misunderstood optical techniques.  The word hologram derives from the combination of two different Greek words “holo” meaning “whole” and “gram” meaning “drawing.”  Understanding the...

Optical particle counting is widely deployed in cleanrooms around the world as a means for counting and sizing the number of particles in the air.  Most people who have ever worked in a clean room, are familiar with the Federal Standard 209E cleanroom...

According to the American Association of Dermatology (AAD), acne is the most common skin condition in the United States, affecting up to 50 million Americans annually with a nontrivial percentage suffering from a chronic form of the condition. ...

There are two critical parameters that all lasers diodes must meet to begin the lasing process.  The first one of these parameters is that there must be more gain than loss inside the laser cavity, the point at which this condition is satisfied is...

At RPMC we are excited to announce the release of our newest lidar white paper titled "Single Frequency Fiber Lasers for Doppler Lidar."  Doppler lidar takes advantage of the fact that when light interacts with moving object, it experiences a...

In honor of the Pittcon conference this month, we here at RPMC Lasers have decided to gear our third quiz on lasers used in analytical instrumentation. In this quiz we cover a wide range of topics from Laser-Induced Break Down Spectroscopy (LIBS) to...

RPMC Lasers will be exhibiting at Pittcon March 18-21 in Phildelphia, PA. Stop by our Booth # 2540 to see the products we will be featuring! Pittcon’s target audience is not just “analytical chemists,” but all laboratory scientists — anyone who...