Hakki Refai
This guest blog comes from Hakki Refai, chief technology officer for Optecks , a TI DLP® Design House dedicated to developing products and solutions for DLP technology based applications.
Spectrometers are highly sophisticated and versatile optical tools for examining the make-up of any state of matter – solid, liquid, or gas – making them useful for monitoring and investigative purposes in a wide variety of industrial and research settings. In all spectrometers, the material is illuminated by a broadband light source – one that emits many wavelengths (or colors) of light – and the material reflects, absorbs, or otherwise interacts with the light to change how much power returns to the spectrometer at each wavelength. If all spectrometers perform the same basic sets of operations, what makes the DLP NIRscan™ Nano Evaluation Module (EVM) so special?
Most current spectrometers use one of two common technologies – rotating diffraction gratings or large linear arrays of detectors – to finely sample what happens to the light over the range of wavelengths. The required detector sizes, materials, and costs, along with the need for high-precision mechanical systems that are isolated from the outside world, prevent these devices from realizing the full potential of spectroscopic measurement. The DLP NIRscan Nano EVM, in contrast, utilizes DLP technology, in conjunction with specially designed interrogation modules to increase measurement sensitivity and flexibility while reducing the measurement time and cost -- all in a compact, highly portable package that can go virtually anywhere.
What aspects of DLP technology and the interrogation modules provide the DLP NIRscan Nano EVM with such distinct advantages in performance, and what is the nature of these advantages? First, let’s look at how using a digital mircromirror device (DMD) and its controlling DLP board transform the process of wavelength sampling.
Interested to know how different modules can be integrated with the DLP NIRscan Nano EVM? Check out “Part Two” of this blog series next week.
Want to learn more about spectroscopy and its applications? Check out a few resources:
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