Supercontinuum fiber laser source for water quality and heavy metals detection

We report a compact, all fiber, 150 ps fiber master oscillator power amplifier operating at 1064 nm that has the ability of producing a maximum average output power of 2.16 W with peak power as high as 10 kW. The output from the master oscillator power amplifier is spliced with a highly nonlinear photonic crystal fiber, generating a supercontinuum with an average power of 250 mW at repetition rate of 1 MHz and spectrum bandwidth spanning from 600 to 1700 nm. The developed supercontinuum system is used to detect the presence of heavy metal contaminants in water by a simple light transmittance method to ensure that the water is free from heavy metal contaminants and safe for consumption. The supercontinuum laser source was shone onto a water sample with a detector placed at another end in order to measure the transmitted supercontinuum light. By measuring the amount of light attenuated at particular wavelength, the concentration of heavy metal contaminants present in the water sample could be determined.