Narrow linewidth tunable diode lasers are an important tool for spectroscopic instrumentation. Conventional external cavity diode lasers offer high output power and narrow linewidth, but they are usually based on complex mechanical cavities with moving parts such as the commonly used Littrow and Littman configurations. However, due to these moving parts the devices will be more sensitive to mechanical resonances in the Hz and kHz range, which include vibrations or acoustic signals such as the human speech.

Here a miniaturized setup will be presented which overcomes this main drawback. By stabilizing the external cavity with a Volume Holographic Grating (VHG), the device will be completely monolithic and will contain no movable parts. Wavelengths from 460 nm to 1900 nm can be addressed with this concept and mode-hop free tuning ranges up to 30 GHz will be made through current injection.

The most important advantages will be presented in terms of power, linewidth and stability. Finally, applications for these laser systems will be discussed.