BIOTECHNOLOGY
TURNING TO
tunable lasers
Technological advances have meant that many modern research labs are turning to tunable lasers
I
n biotechnology, light analysis can be used for various applications, such as identifying biomarkers, monitoring bioreactors,
characterising biopharmaceuticals, and detecting contaminants. Techniques such as transient absorption are used to study the mechanistic and kinetic details of chemical processes that occur within just a few picoseconds to a femtosecond – the equivalent of one millionth of one billionth of a second. To conduct this research, labs
require fast lasers that can create an excited electronic state of a molecule on this time scale. Since all molecules do not absorb the same wavelengths of light, these lasers must be flexible enough to produce wavelengths across a broad spectrum. Technological advances have meant that many research labs are turning to tunable lasers, or Optical Parametric Oscillators (OPOs).
OPTICAL PARAMETRIC OSCILLATORS OPOs have long been used in
sophisticated test and measurement applications such as mass spectrometry and photoacoustic imaging. Now, these ‘tunable’ pulsed
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lasers are being utilised owing to the high resolution and variety of nanosecond wavelength pulses they can produce from visible light to deep UV. “You don’t want to have to
design your chemistry such that it is tailored just to the particular wavelengths you have available in your instrumentation. You want the lasers to be flexible enough to adapt to the chemistry you want to explore,” said Dr. James McCusker, an MSU Foundation Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Michigan State University who leads a research group of PhD students in the study of cutting edge techniques. His group conducts fundamental research on designing and synthesising molecules to absorb the visible part of the spectrum. “We only want to be limited by our imaginations, not by what
wavelengths we can get out of a particular laser,” added Dr. McCusker, who has worked in the field for nearly 30 years.
ULTRAFAST ANALYSIS Dr. McCusker and his team of PhD students study a class of compounds known as transition metal complexes. These compounds are based on elements from the so-called transition block of the periodic table. The focus of the group’s research is to understand how a molecule’s structure, composition and absorptive properties relate to their ability to carry out light-induced chemical reactions.
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