How do I drive a CW QCL?

A CW QCL is about as sensitive to electrical surges and instabilities as a conventional bipolar laser diode (telecom NIR laser). It is necessary to use a good quality power supply to ensure:

• current onset is formed by well controlled ramps without surges
• current and voltage compliance can be precisely set (1mV/1mA)
• current and voltage are stable within 0.1%

We recommend precision laser diode current sources such as the ILX Lightwave LDX-3232.