Ondax Nabs NSF Grant to Develop Tunable Lasers

Ondax Inc. announced Monday that it received a $500,000 Phase II award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to continue development of a novel miniature external cavity tunable single-frequency laser.

The grant follows an earlier demonstration of a self-aligned, nondispersive, tunable single-frequency laser that incorporates a multiline volume holographic grating (VHG) element. The second phase will help the company to extend the tuning range and develop mode-hop-free fine wavelength tuning.

With continued involvement in Phase II development work, Dr. John L. (Jan) Hall, a pioneer in single-frequency lasers and precision spectroscopy, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2005, contributed technical guidance in the first phase of the program. Hall is enthusiastic about the potential of the technology for new space-based high-precision spectroscopy applications.

The company manufactures high-performance VHG filters and wavelength-stabilized laser sources for a range of applications, including Raman spectroscopy, biomedical and analytical instrumentation, environmental sensing, metrology and scientific research.

For more information, visit: www.ondax.com