Design of an environment friendly, compact chiller with precision temperature stability for liquid dye lasers

摘要

Temperature stability of the dye solution is vital for a dye laser. Commercial chillers use refrigerant based cooling with compressors. Such systems are either based on ON/OFF control, suffer poor temperature stability or become bulky as use secondary cooling loop for fine temperature control. We present design of a thermo electric cooler (TEC) based dye solution chiller unit with temperature stability better than ± 0.2℃. The system is energized by a programmable DC power source and required controls are achieved with a PID controller. In addition to the precise temperature control, the unit offers light weight, non CFC, environment friendly all solid-state components for cooling.