New product: Hobbs ElectroOptics QL01 photoreceiver

Hi, all,

The hunchbacks and I just finished up the manual for our first product: the QL01 Quantum Limited Photoreceiver. One version is shot-noise limited above 25 nA in a full 1 MHz bandwidth, and 6 nA in 100 kHz. The other has a much bigger photodiode (7 mm**2 vs 1 mm**2) and is shot noise limited above 45 nA in 1 MHz.

We're planning to sell them for $850. The new web site, should go live tomorrow.

For now, the manual is at .

Tally-ho!

Phil Hobbs

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Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
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Phil Hobbs
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Now you need press releases, which create links, which Google notices.

The Brat can help. She has lists of venues and people and knows tricks.

Introduce a variant later, in 6 months or so, so you can do another round of press releases.

$850 sounds downright economical. PMTs aren't cheap any more. We bought a couple of fast photodetectors recently for $4K each.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   precision measurement  
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John Larkin

Cool, Good luck! (I'm at home so can't look at manual) Who's going to buy this gizmo? I'd sell some cheap to someone, and try and get a blurb in a trade rag, or are you thinking of some other marketing?

George H.

Reply to
George Herold

Nice! May you sell lots.

Is the photodiode just looking out through a hole in the end you don't show?

--sp

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Best regards,  
Spehro Pefhany
Reply to
Spehro Pefhany

Looks tasty!

Be sure to sell spare endplates, I'd want to run one through the machine shop almost every time a new apparatus needs a sensor attached.

Reply to
whit3rd

Yup, that's the next thing on the list.

Thanks, that helps. I'm writing

The crappy Thor Labs ones start at $400 and go up to $1200ish.

It's amazing how crappy the datasheets are on other folks's photoreceivers--it's real work to be able to compare performance, even between models from the same vendor.

I put in a whole lot of discussion of design principles, usage advice, and detailed directions on how to reproduce the performance plots in the manual, what exactly it means to be quantum limited (or shot noise limited), and why that's a good thing to be. LeCroy used to do that sort of thing BITD, I recall.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

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Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
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Phil Hobbs

It's only a megabyte. (Score one for LaTeX.)

Well, once the web site is up, I'm going to send emails to all of my pals and customers, plus send out a nice press release that the trade rags can use unaltered (or nearly). I have Liz Larkin's List (now there's a marketing band name for you) and may think up a few more.

It's a generic enough problem that I'm also looking at OEM business in things like flow cytometry. I have a couple of pals in the biz, so we'll see.

Next product is probably a 3-MHz version of this one, with 1M transimpedance instead of 10M, shot noise limited above probably 150 nA.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

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Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
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Phil Hobbs

Yes. That particular unit has been through a lot, so the business end isn't as pretty as it could be. I've tried just about every decent sized, low capacitance silicon PIN photodiode, and most of them have a lot of series resistance that degrades the noise very significantly. It's a drag when your amp is 0.8 nV and the resistance of the PD's epi comes in at 2 nV. The best ones are from Osram and Infineon, but they're no particular prize.

The good news is that it's only the PD's capacitance and not the FET's that contributes e_NC noise from that source, because they're on opposite sides of the resistance.

My spies tell me that it's possible to get PDs with fine aluminum lines on the face that are very much better. Once we sell a few of these gizmos I'll investigate.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

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Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
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Phil Hobbs

Hey, I was going to suggest that. Selling onezies is OK, but OEM is where the money is. Some of our products don't make money, but they show capability and lead to OEM business.

Does flow cytometry need spectral analysis? Imagine a spectrometer with your sensitivity and bandwidth.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   precision measurement  
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John Larkin

I agree, very nice, a great start!

Did you try UDT's classic parts, like the PIN-5 and the PIN-6?

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 Thanks, 
    - Win
Reply to
Winfield Hill

If you need any UV-enhanced photodiodes, I have a lot left over from a failed project.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   precision measurement  
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John Larkin

On Apr 14, 2017, John Larkin wrote (in article):

Flow cytometry with spectral analysis is real useful, especially if it can analyze fluorescent light from a UV-irradated droplet, so long as the spectral classifier is fast enough to decide which container to send each passing droplet to in time to hit the selected container.

Beckman Instruments (who bought Coulter) makes a number of such flowmeters, so the question is if their sensitivity can be increased enough to make them sit up and notice.

Joe Gwinn

Reply to
Joseph Gwinn

It's possible, thanks. I dimly recall that those were sort of high in capacitance, no?

Thanks

Phil Hobbs

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Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
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Phil Hobbs

FIRST SENSOR PS13-5B-TO5

I have a couple hundred.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   precision measurement  
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John Larkin

At $20 apiece--that must have been annoying.

Their capacitance sticks at about 60 pF at high bias, which is about a fact or of 10 high for the present application, but thanks.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Reply to
pcdhobbs

Congratulations! I can't imagine all the work (N bucketloads?) that went into that. :-) Looks great hope it's a huge success for you.

Ed

Reply to
ehsjr

Thanks. It's amazing how much work goes into the logistics and documentatio n compared with the actual design and testing of the gizmo itself. That was a bit of an eye-opener.

Hopefully we can amortize that over N products. Next up is an all-analogue laser noise canceller with considerably better specs than the New Focus one they've been selling for 20 years. (They basically put my original circuit in a box and derated it to reduce the support cost--probably a smart move at the time.)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Reply to
pcdhobbs

Just sold our first one. Tally-Ho.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Reply to
pcdhobbs

Hah, I still remember when each PO was celebrated. It's fun!

(carry on then,) A fast PD ~100MHz, so you could do speed of light measurements with a 'scope and a fast blinking light source, could sell in the physics demo community.

Shot noise limit, would not be important, a lower price might be... ~$500, I think. George H.

Reply to
George Herold

light source,

Thanks.

Our concept is selling IP in a box, so we're concentrating on pushing the performance envelope in all directions at once. ;)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Reply to
pcdhobbs

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