Source: Nanowerk.com.

    Applied Research and Photonics (ARP) has announced a new product, TeraSpectra, a novel terahertz spectrometer at the 2009 CLEO/photonXpo held at the Baltimore Convention Center from June 2¨C4, 2009. TeraSpectra has potential applications in biological, biomedical, pharmaceutical, and other life science areas. Terahertz technology provides the next generation capabilities, overcoming the so-called terahertz gap, with new applications in this spectrum range. ARP received the prestigious NASA TechBrief¡¯s nano-50 award for its dendrimer nanotechnology based terahertz product. A live demo of the spectrometer was conducted at the PhotonXpo.

    ARP uses dendrimer based terahertz generation technique via difference frequency method. This technique is different than the so called photomixing where one laser is kept fixed and another laser is temperature tuned to vary the mixing wavelengths. ARP uses a dendrimer based high power source pumped with two diode lasers where the beam is split into two arms: one arm remains stationary while the other arm scans the stationary beam that produces an interferogram, characteristic of the specimen-THz interaction. Up to 30 THz can be generated by ARP method with an average power of ~ 3-4 mW.

    ARP¡¯s TeraSpectra is a turn key spectrometer. Time domain measurements can be conducted over a time span of sub-Pico seconds to a few tens of Pico-seconds with a resolution of <100 fs. This wide range allows characterizing a number of molecular events important for biological and materials research. The spectrometer applications may be developed in diagnostics, pharmaceutical, and related areas. The main features ARP claims about this new spectrometer are:

    • TeraSpectra is cost-effective with higher performance because of its next generation technology.
    • A high power source enables probing of a wide variety of specimens thus expanding the scope of the spectrometer.
    • High Signal to Noise Ratio (>2000).
    • Room temperature operation
    • High sensitivity: ~ 10 femtomol.

    For more information, see ARP¡¯s website or contact ARP by email: info@arphotonics.net.