Abstract
Scientific-grade lasers are costly components of modern microscopes. For high-power applications, such as single-molecule localization microscopy, their price can become prohibitive. Here, we present an open-source high-power laser engine that can be built for a fraction of the cost. It uses affordable, yet powerful laser diodes at wavelengths of 405 nm, 488 nm and 638 nm and optionally a 561 nm diode-pumped solid-state laser. The light is delivered to the microscope via an agitated multimode fiber in order to suppress speckles. We provide the parts list, CAD files and detailed descriptions, allowing any research group to build their own laser engine.
Highlights
Fluorescence microscopy is a central method in biology and modern implementations often use lasers as illumination sources
As a substitute for scientific-grade lasers, inexpensive laser diodes can deliver comparable laser power at a fraction of the cost (
The laser diodes are mounted on a custom aluminum holder (see Appendix Fig. 1 (b)) with thermal paste and held by passive heat sinks
Summary
Fluorescence microscopy is a central method in biology and modern implementations often use lasers as illumination sources. The different laser beams are often overlaid within a laser combiner, whether commercially sold or custom-built, and conveyed to the microscope by an optical fiber Because of their cost, scientific-grade lasers used in advanced microscopes often account for a considerable portion of the total microscope price [1], with single units reaching thousands to tens of thousands of euros/dollars. Such laser diodes have already been successfully used for low cost illumination in photoacoustic microscopy [6,7,8,9], pump-probe microscopy [10], stimulated emission-depletion (STED) microscopy [11] and SMLM [12] Due to their high divergence and asymmetrical intensity profile, they are challenging to couple into single-mode optical fibers with a decent efficiency. Several approaches have been explored in order to remove speckles from a multimode fiber profile, including rotating optical elements [12, 16], oscillating diffusive membranes [14, 17] or mechanical agitation [12, 18,19,20]
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