Compact spectroscopy system based on tunable organic semiconductor lasers

We applied a continuously tunable organic semiconductor thin film laser for high resolution transmission spectroscopy. Using a suitable encapsulation application of that low-cost laser device allowed us to realize a very compact and durable measurement system incorporating only very few optical components. To demonstrate the capability of our setup for high-resolution photospectroscopy, we measured the transmission curve of a narrow laser line filter. The resulting data was in good agreement with a measurement of the filter characteristic done using a commercial spectrometer. Our system is capable of measuring optical density (OD) values up to OD 5. A key for future systems is a novel low-cost mechanical tuning method for position-dependent distributed feedback lasers which enables high-speed tuning with wavelength access times under 10 ms independent of the tuning bandwidth.