Optical components, instruments and products for use with lasers, namely, lenses, partial reflectors, beamsplitters, mirrors; optical glass, windows, beam expander-condensers, waveplates, reflective phase retarders, thin film polarizers; electro-optical modulators; mid-wave and long wavelength infrared objectives; optical blanks; single crystal wafers or chips to serve as a substrate for epitaxial deposition of electronic or photonic material structures or for an infrared imaging or detection unit; laser collimators; semiconductor substrates and wafers; brewster windows; mechanical and optical assemblies in the nature of laser equipment for cutting, welding and brazing materials for non-medical purposes, focusing heads, beam director components, beam enhancement tools, beam diagnostic instruments, and integrators; semiconductor diode chips, semiconductor diode arrays, surface-emitting semiconductor diodes, edge emitting semiconductor diodes; optical pumps; laser modules; pump lasers, bars and stacks; high speed Datacom transceivers; vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers; lasers and components for fiber and direct diode laser systems; laser processing heads and fiber beam delivery systems and components for laser material processing; scientific optical equipment, namely, laser cavities, laser crystals, thin film dielectric coatings for use in the manufacture of scientific optical equipment, polarization components, thin film polarizers, waveplates, polarization rotators, filter plates and filter units; prisms; coated optical mirrors; glass laser flow tubes; filters and lenses; components and subsystems for fiber optic communications, namely, tunable filters, sensors, monitors, chromatic dispersion compensators, polarization dispersion compensators, add/drop multiplexers, dynamic gain equalizers, tunable lasers and polarization controllers; electronic and optical communications instruments and components; namely, optical transmitters, optical receivers, optical data links, optical transceivers, cable television transmitters, digital transmitters, and communication link testers for testing communication links; components and subsystems for sensing and thermal imaging, namely, tunable optical detectors, tunable optical emitters, tunable optical filters, drive electronics for tunable optical detectors, tunable optical emitters, tunable optical filters, tunable optical sensors, infrared gas sensors, infrared chemical sensors, infrared biomedical sensors, focal plane arrays, wavelength translators, thermal camera engines, thermal cameras and optical amplifiers; photonic processors, namely, channel processors for dense wavelength division multiplexing of telecommunications signals carried by optic fibers; semiconductor substrates and wafers, silicon carbide wafers and wafer chucks, silicon carbide water cooled mirror, green lasers, and fiber pigtailed laser diode modules, micro-optics for wave-length selective switches, ceramic and metal matrix composites; apparatus for converting thermal and electrical energy for cooling, heating or temperature stabilizing electronics, namely, thermoelectric coolers and converters, electronic component coolers, thermoelectric sub-assemblies, air-to-air thermoelectric assemblies, and air-to-air heat exchangers, namely, thermoelectric-based cooling modules and energy harvesting modules, power generators, and optical windows for use with electrical components