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Optofluidic dye lasers

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Abstract

Optofluidic dye lasers are microfabricated liquid dye lasers enabled by the microfluidics technology. The integration of dye lasers with microfluidics not only facilitates the implementation of complete “lab-on-a-chip” systems, but also allows the dynamical control of the laser properties which is not achievable with solid-state optical components. We review the recent demonstrations of on-chip liquid dye lasers and some of the pre-microfluidics era microscopic dye lasers which are also amenable to microfluidic implementation. Potential applications and future directions are discussed.

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Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge Axel Scherer, Zhaoyu Zhang, Teresa Emery and David Erickson for helpful discussions and their collaboration on this project. This research was supported by the DARPA center for optofluidic integration.

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  1. Department of Electrical Engineering, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, 91125, USA

    Zhenyu Li & Demetri Psaltis

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  1. Zhenyu Li
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Correspondence to Zhenyu Li.

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Li, Z., Psaltis, D. Optofluidic dye lasers. Microfluid Nanofluid 4, 145–158 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10404-007-0225-9

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