1. Description

2. Innovations

3. Products

4. References

Clark-MXR, Inc. is a company located in Dexter, Michigan USA. It was founded in 1992 by the merger of Clark Instrumentation, Inc. and MXR, Inc. Clark Instrumentation, Inc. was formed in 1987 by Dr. William Clark to manufacture ultrafast pulsed-laser oscillators (sometimes referred to as ultrashort, femtosecond, or picosecond laser oscillators). MXR, Inc., was formed in 1991 by Dr. Philippe Bado and Professor Gerard Mourou to manufacture ultrashort-pulse amplifiers based on the concept chirped pulse amplification (CPA) invented in Professor Mourou’s group at the University of Rochester. Professor Mourou was also the first to recognize that new, different physics was involved in the interaction of ultrashort pulses of light with materials.

Description

Clark-MXR serves a number of industrial, scientific and medical markets with ultrafast laser products and tools that use ultrashort pulses of light to achieve specific customer objectives. It has an installed base of over 500 systems worldwide and remains privately held by its founding stockholders.

The Laser Products Division of Clark-MXR, Inc., designs, manufactures, markets, sells and supports ultrafast lasers and spectroscopy instrumentation based on nonlinear processes. Its products are used in a variety of scientific, industrial and medical research including transient absorption spectroscopy, pump/probe spectroscopy, surface-specific SFG spectroscopy and in multimodal nonlinear imaging microscopy using techniques such as CARS, SRS, TPEF, and SHG to visualize the location of specific molecules in cells and tissue. It also manufactures micromachining workstations used in industrial micromachining, micromanufacturing, and proof-of-concept process development.

The Micromachining Division performs contract development, parts manufacturing and other value-added services for third parties using ultrashort pulses of light.^[1]

Innovations

The company and its progenitors have pioneered many of the advances in the development and evolution of ultrafast laser and laser-based tools.

First-to-the-market innovations including:

First commercial colliding pulse mode-locked (CPM) laser (1987)

First commercial autocorrelator to measure ultrashort pulses (1988)

First commercial bow-tie amplifier of ultrashort pulses of light (1989)

First commercial femtosecond Ti:Sapphire oscillator (1990)

First commercial Ti:Sapphire oscillator/amplifier based on chirped pulse amplification (CPA) (1992)

First commercial fiber-laser seeded Ti:Sapphire amplifier (1995)

First commercial “all-in-one-box” Ti:Sapphire oscillator/amplifier (1997)

First commercial non-collinear OPA (NOPA) (1998)

First commercial compact, reliable industrial-grade femtosecond laser (1998)

First commercial software-controlled ultrafast laser (2002)

First commercial ultrafast laser based micromachining workstation (2003)

First commercial broadband nonlinear vibrational spectrometer (2005)

First commercial 20-Watt, Yb-doped fiber laser CPA (2007)

First commercial Apple iPhone client “iLaseCPA” for remote control and monitoring of ultrafast laser products (2008)

Products

Clark-MXR, Inc. products include:

Ultrashort pulse Ti:Sapphire amplifier systems (single shot to multi-kHz)^[2]

Diode-pumped, solid-state fiber laser oscillator and oscillator/amplifier systems for advanced materials processing and molecular imaging (20-Watts average power output)^[3]

Ultrafast laser based micromachining workstations for heat-affected-zone (HAZ) free athermal ablation and component fabrication^[4]

Nonlinear vibrational spectroscopy^[5] and microscopy systems^[6]

optical parametric amplifiers^[7] and harmonic generators^[8] for wavelength conversion and sub-50 fs pulse generation.

References

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