LIFE SCIENCES: LASERS, OPTICS & THERMOELECTRICS
From design to volume manufacturing, Coherent offers unmatched technological breadth and depth for biotech as well as medical and analytical applications and analysis.
March 05, 2024 by Coherent
As the global population ages, the need for smarter healthcare technologies intensifies to address the growing prevalence of chronic and lifestyle-related diseases. Instrumentation developers are under immense pressure to innovate rapidly while minimizing costs and boosting device performance.
To meet these demands, Coherent Corp presents an expanded Life Sciences portfolio that includes our leading high-performance lasers as well as optics and thermoelectric expertise (that we gained from merging the platforms and portfolios of Coherent and II-VI). Our solutions empower developers to optimize existing platforms, design next-generation systems, and manufacture instruments to tackle our society's most challenging health threats.
Our key strengths as your system-level partner
Technological breadth. Our technological expertise now spans gain crystals and other materials, optics, optomechanics (both with and without electronics), sample management, fiber optics, lasers, photonic integrated circuits (PICs), detection, thermal management products, and a whole lot more.
Technological depth. Our vertical integration means we can support you anywhere along the value chain from simple components like lenses and filters, through subassemblies, to complete subsystems including electronics and software.
Design & Manufacturing. And we can partner with you at any point along the product development life cycle. We are a systems-level partner that can help you anywhere from proof of concept to design and volume manufacturing, even within ISO13485-certified facilities.
Applications experience. We bring an unmatched breadth of experience and perspective in applications from cytometry through PCR/Sequencing, diagnostics, medical imaging and therapeutics, ophthalmology, medical laser applications, spectroscopy, analytical techniques, wearables, and many other areas.
Geographic diversity. Take advantage of our staged manufacturing at over 120 locations around the globe and avoid the risks and bottlenecks of centralized supply chains.
Meeting the changing needs in Life Sciences
Of course, the key underlying force driving the direction and speed of so many developments in Life Sciences is the ongoing evolution in health care needs. We have a graying population worldwide that requires an increased emphasis on preventative care vs reactive care, enabled by smarter, more economical, and efficient technologies. These solutions cover everything from next-generation analytical and research instruments to the emerging field of medical wearables.
Whether you’re involved in current platform optimization, new platform design, or next-generation instrumentation development, responding to this healthcare revolution requires decreasing time to market, reducing costs, and improving performance. This usually entails using modular design strategies, innovative hardware technologies, and integration, design for manufacturability, and improved software configurability. Coherent is uniquely structured to partner you at any and every stage.
Let’s take a brief look at just some of the areas where we are involved in this exciting life sciences revolution.
Biotechnology instrumentation
Two applications that really showcase how we can partner with you are PCR analysis and flow cytometry.
Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is a critical tool in genomics for applications from pharma through oncology, disease monitoring, and even forensics. Repeated thermal cycling allows the amplification of even the most trace amounts of genetic material. And for monitoring viruses and other infectious agents in the blood, it can also provide quantitative data. Our key technologies here are thermoelectric coolers and subassemblies, LED and laser-based light engines, optical filters, precision windows, lenses, and mirrors, and custom subassemblies and systems integrating some or all of these technologies.
Flow cytometry relies on a similar mix of technologies that we manufacture internally, in addition to our flow cells and objective lenses. Laser output noise, beam quality, and focus are all critical to low CV data which is why our OBIS lasers are so popular here. Our latest CellX multi-wavelength laser engines provide multiple easy-to-adjust focused laser lines for multi-parameter instruments.
A key Coherent biotechnology stat: Dielectric optical filters are critical to sequencing, cytometry, and PCR. We operate over 100 coating chambers to make these in quantities from single units to 100’s of thousands.
Coherent leverages comprehensive vertical integration to deliver best-in-class PCR and Flow Cytometry solutions.
Medical systems
Our components and sub-systems are used in a wide range of medical laser systems – often including fiber delivery – to enable cosmetic and ophthalmic treatments as well as for dental and other surgical procedures. They are also used in imaging applications such as endoscopy and optical coherence tomography and in therapeutics. The latest area where we are providing products and expertise is in medical wearables – both as add-on apps to smartphones as well as standalone devices.
In dermatology, we provide CO₂, diode, OPSL, and excimer lasers for hair removal, fractional resurfacing/wrinkle removal, lesion treatment, pigment removal, and other procedures, plus beam delivery systems and laser components including crystals and gain fibers. In ophthalmology we supply excimer and ultrafast lasers for Lasik and other corneal reshaping procedures, ultrafast lasers for better cataract treatments (IOL insertion), and our yellow (OPSL) lasers that optimize retinal photocoagulation.
Coherent lasers, components, and subsystems fuel the development of cutting-edge medical treatments and systems.
- A key Coherent medical systems number: VCSELs are important lasers in many medical systems particularly the new wearables, which are expected to quickly reach very high volumes. Coherent has shipped literally billions of lasers for a wide range of medical applications.
Analytical instrumentation
The analytical instrumentation market segment includes air, water, food, beverage, and pharmaceutical testing and monitoring which will drive development of field deployable and rugged instrumentation as environmental and safety concerns become more prevalent. Scientists working in this field rely heavily on photonics, often some type of optical spectroscopy, to interrogate their samples quickly and accurately.
Coherent lasers empower spectroscopy instruments to deliver superior results, accelerating scientific discovery.
Spectroscopic instruments widely use our lasers because of their extremely stable, low-noise, optical output power. We also supply instrument vendors with precision optics such as bandpass, dichroic, UV, and notch filters in single- and multi-band formats as well as high-performance aluminum mirrors, flow cells, windows, beam splitters, and lenses. And we can bring all these products together into sub-systems that provide drop-in functionality.
- A key Coherent Analytical instrumentation fact: Numerous laser wavelengths are required for different material, chemical and compositional studies. We provide a wide range of laser technologies supporting UV-VIS-NIR-IR, with over 30 CW wavelengths.
Some final thoughts
Life sciences today is a field characterized by change and associated opportunity, meaning time to market has never been more important. With Coherent as your partner, we promise we can help get you to your goals faster and more cost-efficiently. We invite you to leverage our global manufacturing and vertical integration to successfully meet your performance, quality, and cost reduction requirements.
Learn how our Life Sciences solutions can streamline your instrumentation development cycle.
