2025 Internship Project Overview

The goal of our project was to characterize mid-infrared quantum cascade ridge lasers, which are helpful for gas detection and other medical and environmental applications.

Nick made software that interacts with lab machines for the testing and measuring of various electronic devices, including ridge lasers. This software interacts with machine drivers to set and read current and voltage from devices, plotting them in a custom graphical user interface. Nick also created a custom measurement function for pulsed voltage inputs, which can measure output current and voltages in noisy pulsed data. Minli worked on gathering and interpreting experimental data from lasers at both room and cool temperatures, then coding a program that takes that information and returns important characteristics unique to the model (one of which is cavity length).

ORGANIZATION/RESEARCH GROUP

Gmachl Research Group, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Princeton University

LOCATION

Princeton, New Jersey

 

Interns

Nicolas Feng ’28
Major: Electrical and Computer Engineering
Minor(s): Computer Science
"I learned about quantum cascade lasers and introductory photonics and obtained hands-on experience working with lab machine software. I found the automation aspect most interesting, as well as how to write code for other lab members to continue after my internship."
Minli Guo ’28
Major: Electrical and Computer Engineering
"I developed skills in experimental data gathering and interpretation, and learned how device structure affects laser behavior. I especially enjoyed working closely with researchers in a collaborative environment. This experience motivated me to pursue further study in this area."

Click to view the end-of-project presentation

 

Claire Gmachl