Facilities and equipment

Our laser spectroscopy lab is located at the Department of Chemistry, University of Helsinki.

Our laboratories are fully equipped for experimental research of high-resolution molecular spectroscopy. Below you can find a list of our major research instruments.

Virtual lab tour (360 video)

Users or the Raman instruments listed below: If you are familiar with the instrument and have used it before, please use Open IRIS to gain access and reserve instrument time (instructions below). For details, contact Markku Vainio (see Contact page).

  • NT-MDT NTEGRA Raman/AFM/TERS microscope
  • Bruker FT-Raman RAM II
  • Fast Coherent Raman Imaging instrument (www.qcsi.fi)

Optical Frequency Comb (OFC) generators

  • Fully stabilized mode-locked Er-fiber comb (Menlo Systems FC1500-250-WG with M-NIR and P250 PM PULSE EDFA extensions. GPS-referenced)
  • High-power (10 W) mode-locked Yb-fiber laser (Menlo Systems Orange-Comb-250 + HIGH POWER 10)
  • High-power (> 0.5 W) fully stabilized mid-infrared comb that operates in the ~ 3 µm molecular fingerprint region. Fully developed and built by our team, based on simple CW-seeded optical parametric generation. APL Photonics 6, 026103 (2021)

CW laser instruments

  • High-power (0.5 to 5 W), narrow-linewidth (< 1MHz) CW-OPO that operate in the ~ 3 µm molecular fingerprint region. Developed and built by our team; see e.g. Opt. Express 16, 11141 (2008), Appl. Opt. 50, A1-A10 (2011), Opt. Express 18, 14087 (2010)
  • Widely tunable external-cavity diode laser, 1.5 µm region; (Toptica DLC CTL 1550)
  • Widely tunable external-cavity diode laser, 1.5 µm region; (New Focus Velocity 6328)
  • Widely tunable CW Ti:sapphire laser (MBR-PS) pumped by Coherent Verdi V18
  • Narrow-linewidth 1064 nm fiber lasers and DFB diode lasers
  • High-power (15 to 20 W) CW Yb-fiber amplifiers (IPG YAR-X-1064-LP-SF)
  • Quantum cascade lasers

Spectroscopy instrumentation

  • High-resolution FTIR spectrometer (Bruker IFS 120HR)
  • Optical spectrum analyzers and wavelength meters (ANDO AQ6315E, Bristol Instruments 771B-MIR, EXFO WA-1500-NIR/IR-89)
  • Cantilever-enhanced PAS cells (Gasera PA201/301), cavity-ring-down spectrometers and multipass cells

Microscopy instrumentation maintained jointly with other groups

  • NT-MDT NTEGRA Spectra II – AFM-Raman-TERS microscope (with 532 nm and 633 nm lasers)
  • Bruker FT-Raman RAM II
  • Fast Coherent Raman Imaging (www.qcsi.fi)