Research > Faculty Projects
Ultra Low-cost Spectrometer Product Prototype Demonstration
Principal Investigator
Denise Wilson
Sponsor(s)
NSF
Compliant Embedded Systems Research, Inc.(CESR)
Award Period
07/01/2007 - 06/30/2008
Abstract
The proposed project emphasizes a new approach to
spectrometer design that can decrease the cost and size of
these general-purpose sensing instruments by 1-2 orders of
magnitude over existing designs. Spectrometer designs that
can be manufactured at less than $50 unit cost have the
capacity to enable major increases in accessibility for a
broad range of customers, from research to development to
field use. Corresponding decrease in footprint (physical
size) of the spectrometer also allows multiple query
sites/angles of a single sample, which has the potential to
resolve ambiguities inherent in a single measurement. The
proposed spectrometer design manipulates both light source
(excitation) spectra and photo detector (emission)
components of the spectrometer signal path to eliminate the
need for dispersion optics, optical alignment and
calibration, and associated signal processing. In simplest
terms, much of the optical overhead is transferred to
electronic (control and detection) overhead, thus reducing
both size and cost of the resulting general purpose
(spectrometer) instrument.
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