News and Press Releases

February 25, 2020

More power and more diodes with PicoQuant’s updated laser driver Taiko PDL M1

A free firmware update enables operating existing and new laser heads at highest possible pulse energy

PicoQuant expands the capabilities of the high-end picosecond diode laser driver Taiko PDL M1. The new Max Power Mode of operation allows running existing and new laser heads with increased power. Taiko’s smart and flexible power control and monitoring enables outputting pulses with an almost perfectly constant and calibrated set of parameters (pulse energy and pulse shape) at any repetition rate. With the new Max Power Mode, the driver can operate each laser diode at the maximum pulse energy possible for any repetition rate setting.

February 20, 2020

Studying up-conversion nanoparticles with PicoQuant’s FluoTime 300 time-resolved spectrometer and 980 nm ps pulsed laser

A paper in ChemPhotoChem describes how up-conversion nanoparticles initiate photopolymerization of multifunction methacrylates

In a recent ChemPhotChem paper, a research team used PicoQuant’s 980 nm laser head as excitation source for studying the photophysical properties of up-conversion nanoparticles. These up-conversion particles absorb multiple near infrared photons and then emit blue and UV light. The high-powered laser supports burst mode operation in which it generates a large number of picosecond pulses within a given time span. This burst pattern is repeated periodically and allows pumping more excitation energy into a sample than with individual pulses.

Paper at ChemPhotChem

Laser heads of the LDH series incl. the 980 nm head

January 30, 2020

Combining FLIM-FRET and STED microscopy in vivo using a newly developed FRET pair

A recently published article in Nature Scientific Reports

Congratulations to Erika Günther (former Postdoctoral Researcher at Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, Potsdam, Germany) and her colleagues on their exciting work combining FLIM-FRET and STED microscopy in vivo using a newly developed FRET pair! This combination enables the study of protein interactions in sub-diffraction structures. The group uses FLIM-FRET to monitor the connection of the bacterial filament MamK to the magnetosome membrane via the linker MamJ, and STED to check the filament for fragmentation. Also impressive, they use PicoQuant's 6th MicroTime 200 microscope, built in 2004, for performing this cutting-edge research. This system features a custom-built STED add-on using one of the first P-FA-765 lasers from PicoQuant for depletion. If you want to build on their research, good news: by now, an alignment-free, multicolor easySTED add-on is available for our MicroTime 200 confocals to perform STED-FLIM-FRET and STED-F(LC)CS experiments.

Article at nature.com

PicoQuant's MicroTime 200 STED