How do Spectrometers work?
The spectrometers manufactured by Sarspec are high-quality systems with an aluminum alloy optical bench that has been thoroughly optimized for each optical element. The optical elements inside the optical bench are assembled using a symmetrical Czerny-Turner configuration, which significantly increases the sensitivity of the spectrometer. In its simplest form, Sarspec spectrometers consist of an entrance slit (2), a collimating mirror (4), a diffraction grating (5), a focusing mirror (6), and a detector (9).
The light radiated by a light source or sample enters the spectrometer through standard SMA 905 connectors (1) and is collimated by the first mirror (4) to a diffraction grating (5). The diffraction grating separates the incoming polychromatic light into monochromatic light and directs it to a second mirror (6) that focuses the monochromatic light onto a CCD detector array (9).
Other optical elements such as user inter-changeable optical filters (3), which are placed after the entrance slit for wavelength range selection or light attenuation, collecting lens (7), which improves the sensitivity of the spectrometer, and order-sorting optical filters (8), which prevent higher orders of the diffraction grating to reach the detector, can be added and allows for higher flexibility and greater performance of our spectrometers.
How does the detected light become a spectrum?
In the detector line of pixels, each element (pixel) detects a fraction of the monochromatic light and gives an individual electrical output. The combination of the multiple signals from multiple pixels will build a spectrum with intensity (counts) per pixel.
A posterior calibration will allow the conversion from pixel to wavelength which will result in the final output: spectra with information of intensity (counts) as a function of the wavelength. This will be the base for all the results obtained with Sarspec’s spectrometers.