University of Dundee

Ncr Corporation

Edik Rafailov

Craig James Hamilton

Graeme Malcolm

Amin Abdolvand

Thomas Sudmeyer

Nart Daghestani

Ursula Keller

Kurt Weingarten

Pablo Loza-Alvarez

Yohan Barbarin

David J Carnegie

Grigorii Sokolovskii

Pablo Loza Alvarez

David Artigas

Todor Kalkandjiev

A mode locked semiconductor disk laser with an output beam having an ultra-short pulse length which provides the incident beam to a non linear microscope. The wavelength of the beam is at or near the action cross section maximum absorption wavelength for creating two photon excited fluorescence of a fluorescent biological marker in a sample. Semiconductor disk lasers combine excellent beam quality and output power, stability while maintaining simplicity and easiness of operation. In addition, these types of lasers are ideally suited for mass production as they are built in wafer-scale technology enabling a high level of integration. Importantly this non expensive, turn-key, compact laser system could be used as a platform to develop portable non-linear bio-imaging devices for clinical studies, facilitating its wide-spread adoption in 'real-life' applications.

Semiconductor disk laser for nonlinear microscopy applications in living organisms

A STED microscope for producing a 3D image. The microscope has an excitation laser source for providing an excitation laser beam and a depletion laser source for providing stimulated emission depletion laser beam. The excitation beam is capable of exciting fluorescent markers in a sample placed in the sample region and the depletion beam is capable of inducing stimulated emission in the fluorescent marker in the sample in a region around the excitation beam to restrict the size of the region within which the fluorescent markers are excited and wherein the depletion laser source goes through an optical element which creates a cone refractive pattern which induces stimulated emission in the fluorescent marker in the sample. The shape of the light hollow of the cone refractive pattern varies at different distances from the source. This depth profile can be used to distinguish between positions at varying depths within a sample to create a 3D image. The combination of varying intensity across the sample and at different depths means that the present invention is able to produce images with lateral and axial resolutions ranging from the micro to the nano regime.

Three dimensional stimulated emission depletion microscopy

An optical system () with an input optical source () for projecting an input beam along an optical axis and an optical element () which creates a cone refracted beam () from the input beam () then reconstructs the input beam (). The optical element may comprise a first cone refractive element () which creates a cone refracted beam and reconstructs the beam using a reconstructing optical element () to apply a phase shift to the cone refracted beam. The optical system may be used to form a laser or a gain medium for a laser.

Photonic devices based on conical refraction

A photoconductive device () comprises a plurality of photoconductive layers (), each photoconductive layer comprising photoconductive material () and a respective plurality of electrodes (), wherein the photoconductive layers () are electrically connected together.

Photoconductive device

Growing community of inventors

Dundee, United Kingdom

Edik Rafailov