Serving a wide variety of clients since 2005, Advanced Optical Microsystems (AOMicro) offers consulting and expert witness services for micro-optical and micromechanical devices. With a proven track record in the demonstration of novel optical MEMS and surface normal photonics, AOMicro offers a unique skill set encompassing device layout and design, advanced micro- and nanofabrication processes, expertise in thin film dielectrics, as well as compound and elemental semiconductor materials. Covering all steps from numerical design and simulation to the manufacturing and analysis of final packaged die, AOMicro offers expert advice for those interested in making their concept a reality.

R&D Highlight: Praevium Research and partner AOMicro have developed MEMS-tunable VCSELs capable of the widest tuning range yet demonstrated, with a continuous single-mode wavelength span of 150 nm in 1310 nm lasers and a 100 nm tuning range near 1060 nm. Details of the performance of these record breaking tunable lasers can be found in the Electronics Letters papers highlighted below, as well as in the additional feature articles, including those from Nature Photonics and Laser Focus World. These fully-integrated ultra-widely tunable lasers employ electrostatic actuation for tuning, resulting in low-power consumption and high-speed wavelength scanning in a compact on-chip platform amenable to wafer-scale batch fabrication techniques. In collaboration with MIT and Thorlabs, these revolutionary lasers are now being applied at the heart of a commercial swept source system for Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) applications. The first imaging results from our previous generation of devices capable of >100 nm of tuning were originally presented at the postdeadline session of the Conference on Lasers and Elecro-Optics (CLEO) in Baltimore, Maryland in May 2011 in presentation PDPB2, while updated results were featured in an invited talk at SPIE Photonics West in Conference 8276 (Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Lasers XVI) in January 2012. A MEMS-VCSEL-enabled demonstration system has been featured at a number of exhibitions, look for it at a conference near you!

Electronics Letters: High-sweep-rate 1310 nm MEMS-VCSEL with 150 nm continuous tuning range

Electronics Letters: Rapidly swept, ultra-widely-tunable 1060 nm MEMS-VCSELs

EL Feature: A clean sweep for MEMS-VCSELs

Nature Photonics Research Highlight: A steady sweep

Laser Focus World News Break: MEMS-based VCSEL reaches record 150 nm tuning range

Photonics West: Broadly tunable high repetition rate 1310 nm VCSELs for swept source optical coherence tomography

CLEO 2011: OCT imaging up to 760 kHz axial scan rate using single-mode 1310 nm MEMS-tunable VCSELs with >100 nm tuning range

Featured Article: Laser Focus World, vol. 47, no. 7, p. 15, July 2011

Use the links to the right to explore AOMicro's unique capabilities. For the full portfolio, please view the list of publications and curriculum vitæ of Dr. Garrett D. Cole.