Fibre optic emitter offers long-term reliability

“It gives customers peace of mind,” says William Heath, Managing Director of OMC.

“Usually these devices are protected by a plastic cap device that clips on, which is fine, it offers mechanical protection to chip, wirebond and optics. It gives adequate protection, but it’s not hermetically sealed,” adds Heath. “This means customers have to consider the environmental impact long-term if the diode is not being used where the environment is humidity-controlled, and if the customer expects the device to last for 30 years, it’s another thing for them to worry about.”

By contrast, the hermetically sealed housing of the FDE851HLBF eliminates this variable, as air from the operational environment cannot reach the internal components.

The impetus for the product came from a customer with a military/aerospace background who was fastidious about protection and wasn’t convinced by the arguments for a plastic cap device.

“So,” says Heath, “we went away and developed the hermetically-sealed version.”

It is designed for applications where long term reliability is paramount, and as Heath observes, “this device is highly specialised with very few similar products available on the market globally.”

It suits a wide range of fibre optic applications including datacomms, sensing, encoding, instrumentation and signalling, ensuring speed and integrity of signal over a long operating life.

The FDE851HLBF 850nm emitter is built on a hermetically-sealed TO-can body with glass optical window that helps protect the device internals from atmospheric conditions.

The device features fast rise/fall times allowing high speed operation in the tens of MHz, and contains integral micro-optics which focus the beam to a very narrow point which delivers efficient coupling into multimode glass optical fibres as small as 50µm, achieving a typical launch power of 30µW at 100mA into 50/125 fibre.