We know lab equipment is expensive and you shouldn't have to buy new stuff to use fotonica. Our software is designed to support various instruments and with our modular hardware assemblies, you can reconfigure and optimize the system for your different testing needs.

Vertically-coupled fiber stage

Our vertically-coupled fiber stage provides 6 axes of motion. The basic setup comes with motorized XYZ travel and manual adjustment of the fiber array about these 3 axes (eg: pitch, roll, and yaw, respectively).

Features:

XYZ, Pitch, Roll, and Yaw Fiber Array Stage (6 degrees of freedom)

• Sub-µm closed-loop XYZ positioning with 50, 100mm or more XY and 30mm Z
• +/-5 degrees fiber launch (pitch)
• +/-5 degrees fiber yaw
• 360 degrees fiber roll
• Center of rotations around fiber array tip

Fixed chip stage

• Rotation (+/- 5 degrees)
• Tip-tilt
• Thermally tuned with shrouds to vent hot/cold air to limit thermal drift (1" hose and fan not shown)
• Selectable vacuum ports for different sized chips

Optional

• Motorized fiber insertion angle (shown) vs. manual
• Motorized chip stage rotation (shown) vs. manual

Edge-coupled fiber stage

Our edge-coupled fiber stage provides 5 axes of motion. The basic setup comes with motorized XYZ travel and manual adjustment of the fiber array around 2 of these axes (eg: pitch and yaw). Roll (rotation) can be achieved with a polarization controller between the laser source and launch fiber.

Features:

XYZ, Pitch, and Yaw Edge-Coupled Fiber Stage (5 degrees of freedom)

• +/- 20nm closed-loop XYZ positioning with 12, 18, or 26mm travel
• +/-5 degrees fiber launch (pitch)
• +/-5 degrees fiber yaw (manual)
• Center of rotations around fiber tip

Optional:

• Motorized fiber pitch (shown) vs. manual
• Motorized fiber yaw (shown) vs. manual

System customization

We realize that each research lab or product team has unique needs that may require modifications to fotonica. A few examples of what we have done already are shown below.

Thermal management

Parts can be fabricated from low-CTE material (like Titanium or Garolite) to minimize alignment drift due to ambient temperature fluctuations. We’ve also developed shrouds around the heat sink to actively vent spent air away from the chip and surrounding stages.

Reconfigurations

We strive to use as many similar parts as possible. This not only saves costs but also gives you the ability to reconfigure systems or upgrade to motorized axes as needs evolve.

Single fiber and fiber arrays

We have a variety of single fiber and fiber array holders to accommodate for various types of fibers/arrays and different applications, e.g. launch angles or rotations. We’re happy to design a fiber holder according to your specs.

Biosensing

One application-specific variant of fotonica is the biosensing extension. The chip stage mounts a flow cell to expose sensors to analytes sequenced with a fluidic stage and pump. fotonica is able to run long bio assays and track sensor specific performance in real-time.