School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 50 Nanyang Avenue, Singapore 639798.
Lab Chip. 2011 Sep 21;11(18):3182-7. doi: 10.1039/c1lc20435a. Epub 2011 Aug 9.
This paper presents a tunable optofluidic waveguide dye laser utilizing two centrifugal Dean flows. The centrifugal Dean flow increases the light confinement of the dye laser by shaping a three-dimensional (3D) liquid waveguide from curved microchannels. The active medium with the laser dye is dissolved in the liquid core and pumped with an external pump laser to produce stimulated emission. The laser's Fabry-Pérot microcavity is formed with a pair of aligned gold-coated fiber facets to amplify the fluorescent emission. The advantage of the 3D optofluidic waveguide dye laser is its higher efficiency, thus to obtain lasing at a reduced threshold (60%) with higher output energy. The demonstrated slope efficiency is at least 3-fold higher than its traditional two-dimensional equivalent. In addition, the laser output energy can be varied on demand by tuning the flow rates of the two flows. This technique provides a versatile platform for high potential applications microfluidic biosensor and bioanalysis.
本文提出了一种利用两个离心 Dean 流的可调谐光流体波导染料激光器。离心 Dean 流通过将弯曲微通道成形为三维（3D）液体波导，增加了染料激光器的光限制。含有激光染料的工作介质溶解在液体芯部中，并通过外部泵浦激光进行抽运以产生受激发射。激光的法布里-珀罗微腔由一对对准的镀金光纤面形成，以放大荧光发射。3D 光流体波导染料激光器的优点是其效率更高，从而可以在降低阈值（60%）的情况下获得激光，同时具有更高的输出能量。所展示的斜率效率至少比其传统二维等效物高出 3 倍。此外，通过调节两种流的流速，可以按需改变激光输出能量。这项技术为微流控生物传感器和生物分析等具有高潜力的应用提供了一个通用平台。
