Tailor-made diets with the NUTRISHIELD project
The NUTRISHIELD project aims at creating a personalised health platform for the young including tailor-made diets based on analysis of a wide range of biomarkers related to nutrition and health disorders. This research, performed in collaboration with Radboud University and the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan, Italy, is part of the EU’s FOOD 2030 research […]
QC-XT Laser used for CO/N2O/CO2/H2O detection
A team from the University of Bari in collaboration with Alpes Lasers uses a QC-XT laser combined with a quartz-enhanced photoacoustic spectroscopy setup to measure carbon monoxide (CO), nitrous oxide (N2O), carbon dioxide (CO2), and water vapor (H2O) simultaneously. The device emission wavelengths ranged from 2100 cm-1 to 2250 cm-1 and the achieved minimum detection […]
ICL External Cavity
Interband Cascade Lasers are now available as a broad gain lasers suitable for use in an external cavity. Interband Cascade Lasers are available as a broad gain lasers suitable for use in an external cavity. You can find here a recent Optics Express article available in open access describing the performance of the external cavity system, or come to Photonics West 2022 to […]
Balloon-borne QCL measurements
Using the lightweigth and small size intrinsic to QCL systems, researchers at EMPA have demonstrated a new Compact and lightweight mid-infrared laser spectrometer for balloon-borne water vapor measurements. This comes on top of their previous achievement of mounting a QCL on a drone!
Laser Spectroscopy with XT-QCL
A group at the TU Wien and Friedrich-Alexander University, who are partners with Alpes Lasers through the Hydroptics and WaterSpy project, have recently published a paper titled “Polarimetric Balanced Detection: Background-Free Mid-IR Evanescent Field Laser Spectroscopy for Low-Noise, Long-term Stable Chemical Sensing” which uses a QC-XT laser from Alpes Lasers to measure water quality in situ at the Prato water treatment […]
Phosphine on Venus
Phosphine (PH3) – a possible biosignature on rocky planets – was detected in significant quantities in Venus’ atmosphere. With absorption spectra in the mid-IR, Alpes Lasers QCLs are uniquely suited for measuring phosphine even at extremely low concentrations. See how our QCLs have recently been used to measure PH3 concentrations.
Gas Sensing aboard drones
The small size and weight of quantum cascade lasers (only ~100 g for HHL housings) make them ideal candidates for integration into remote sensing devices. In this paper published by EMPA an Alpes QCL emitting at 7.83 μm is integrated into a hexacopter drone, achieving a methane concentration measurement with a precision of 0.1 ppb. The system was flown […]
