Patent ID: 7535936

Claim:
A tunable mid-IR (MIR) laser device comprising: a housing; a thermo electric cooling (TEC) device contained within said housing; a heat spreader mounted within said housing above a surface of said TEC; a quantum cascade laser gain medium contained within said housing and fixedly coupled to said heat spreader; an output optical lens contained within said housing and fixedly mounted to said heat spreader for collimating light output from said quantum cascade laser gain medium to an exterior of said housing; a filter having a filter support fixedly mounted to said heat spreader, said filter operative in the 3-12 μm range for selecting one of a plurality of wavelengths that are spaced by at least 0.75 Gigahertz, the spacing being commensurate with the filter being spaced apart from the quantum cascade laser gain medium a distance of less than twenty centimeters, and the filter feeding back to said quantum cascade laser gain medium said selected wavelength; and a filter lens fixedly mounted to said heat spreader for collimating light output from said quantum cascade laser gain medium to said filter; said heat spreader serving to distribute heat to said TEC and also serving as an optical platform to fixedly position said quantum cascade laser gain medium and said output optical lens, said filter lens and said filter relative to one another.