A Monolithic Spatial Heterodyne Raman Spectrometer: Initial Tests

Half-Inch Monolithic Spatial Heterodyne Raman Spectrometer: A Study of Polarized Raman Spectra of Organic Liquids and Instrumental Performance

Raman spectroscopy allows for the unambiguous identification of materials through the inelastic scattering of light. This technique has a great many uses in various aspects of society from academic, scientific, and industry. This paper explores a specific type of Raman spectrometer called a spatial heterodyne Raman spectrometer (SHRSy), which is a variation of an interferometric spectrometer. It utilizes a Michelson interferometer and replaces the mirrors with gratings that transform it from a time-domain spectrometer to a spatial-domain spectrometer, allowing for the entirety of the spectrum to be captured at once. This study specifically tests a half-inch two-grating monolithic SHRS (½-in. 2g-mSHRS), which has a weight of <60 g and a size of 2.2 × 2.2 × 1.3 cm. To do this we excite a variety of organic liquids with a 532 nm neodymium-doped yttrium aluminum garnet (Nd:YAG) pulsed laser, using an excitation energy of 6.5 mJ/pulse and distance of 3 m in conjunction with an intensified charge-coupled device camera. This is the first time that the SHRS has been used for investigating polarized Raman spectra of liquids. We discuss and contrast the instrumental properties such as resolution, spectral range, étendue, and field of view with previously tested mSHRS to give context to the instrument's performance.

Optics miniaturization strategy for demanding Raman spectroscopy applications

Raman spectroscopy provides non-destructive, label-free quantitative studies of chemical compositions at the microscale as used on NASA's Perseverance rover on Mars. Such capabilities come at the cost of high requirements for instrumentation. Here we present a centimeter-scale miniaturization of a Raman spectrometer using cheap non-stabilized laser diodes, densely packed optics, and non-cooled small sensors. The performance is comparable with expensive bulky research-grade Raman systems. It has excellent sensitivity, low power consumption, perfect wavenumber, intensity calibration, and 7 cm-1 resolution within the 400-4000 cm-1 range using a built-in reference. High performance and versatility are demonstrated in use cases including quantification of methanol in beverages, in-vivo Raman measurements of human skin, fermentation monitoring, chemical Raman mapping at sub-micrometer resolution, quantitative SERS mapping of the anti-cancer drug methotrexate and in-vitro bacteria identification. We foresee that the miniaturization will allow realization of super-compact Raman spectrometers for integration in smartphones and medical devices, democratizing Raman technology.

Single-Grating Monolithic Spatial Heterodyne Raman Spectrometer: An Investigation on the Effects of Detector Selection

Spatial heterodyne Raman spectrometers (SHRSs) are modified forms of Michelson interferometers, except the mirrors in a Michelson interferometer are replaced with stationary diffraction gratings. This design removes the need for an entrance slit, as is the case in a dispersive spectrometer, and removes the need to scan the spectrum by using a moving mirror in a modern Michelson interferometer. In previous studies, various SHRS variants, such as free-standing two-grating SHRS, single-grating SHRS (1g-SHRS), monolithic SHRS (mSHRS), and single-grating mSHRS (1g-mSHRS), have been evaluated. However, the present study exclusively focuses on the 1g-mSHRS configuration. The 1g-mSHRS and 1g-SHRS increase the spectral range at fixed grating line density while trading off spectral resolution and resolving power. The mSHRS benefits from increased rigidity, lack of moving parts, and reduced footprint. In this study, we investigate how the choice of detector impacts the performance of the 1g-mSHRS system, with a specific focus on evaluating the performance of three types of cameras: charged-coupled device (CCD), intensified CCD (ICCD), and complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) cameras. These systems were evaluated using geological, organic, and inorganic samples using a 532 nm continuous wave laser for the CMOS and CCD cameras, and a 532 nm neodymium-doped yttrium aluminum garnet pulsed laser for the ICCD camera. The footprint of the 1g-mSHRS was 3.5 × 3.5 × 2.5 cm3 with a mass of 272 g or 80 g, depending on whether the monolith housing is included or not. We found that increasing the number of pixels utilized along the x-axis of the camera increases fringe visibility (FV) and optimizes the resolution (by capturing the entirety of the grating and magnifying the fringes). The number of pixels utilized in the y-axis, chip size, and dimensions, affect the signal-to-noise ratio of the systems. Additionally, we discuss the effect of pixel pitch on the recovery of Fizeau fringes, including the relationship between the Nyquist frequency, aliasing, and FV.

Monolithic Miniature Glass Spectrometer

This paper presents a monolithic spectrometer based on a plano-convex glass lens and achieves a resolution better than 0.7 nm in the spectral range of 550-720 nm. In the monolithic instrument, all components were fixed in the machined lens, resulting in a much smaller size and more stable assembly than traditional mini spectrometers. Additionally, a dual-band design was proposed and demonstrated to extend the spectral range from the visible band (550-700 nm) to the near-infrared band (800-900 nm), thus allowing more characteristic spectral fingerprints for improved material identification. The feasibility of compensating the residual aberrations caused by structural limitations with a specifically designed aberration-correcting grating is further detailed.

Computational analysis of a scalable optically homogeneous free-space interferometer

This study describes a scalable optically homogeneous free-space interferometer. Computationally modeled as an unbroken block of fused silica, the interferometer's six-sided design is simple and intuitive, exploiting total internal reflection and refraction to split and recombine a collimated input beam. During propagation, one portion of the split beam remains within the substrate to act as a reference beam. The second portion of the split beam is exposed to the surrounding environment, enabling real-world environment characterization in real time. Validation of the interferometer concept is performed using numerical and analytical techniques. Based on its scalability and robustness, the proposed interferometer design is primed for applications in atmospheric sensing, passive chemical detection, and spaceborne technologies.

Remote Raman Sensing Using a Single-Grating Monolithic Spatial Heterodyne Raman Spectrometer: A Potential Tool for Planetary Exploration

Advances in Raman instrumentation have led to the implementation of a remote dispersive Raman spectrometer on the Perseverance rover on Mars, which is used for remote sensing. For remote applications, dispersive spectrometers suffer from a few setbacks such as relatively larger sizes, low light throughput, limited spectral ranges, relatively low resolutions for small devices, and high sensitivity to misalignment. A spatial heterodyne Raman spectrometer (SHRS), which is a fixed grating interferometer, helps overcome some of these problems. Most SHRS devices that have been described use two fixed diffraction gratings, but a variance of the SHRS called the one-grating SHRS (1g-SHRS) replaces one of the gratings with a mirror, which makes it more compact. In a recent paper we described monolithic two-gratings SHRS, and in this paper, we investigate a single-grating monolithic SHRS (1g-mSHRS), which combines the 1g-SHRS with a monolithic setup previously tested at the University of South Carolina. This setup integrates the beamsplitter, grating, and mirror into a single monolithic device. This reduces the number of adjustable components, allows for easier alignment, and reduces the footprint of the device (35 × 35 × 25 mm with a weight of 80 g). This instrument provides a high spectral resolution (∼9 cm^-1) and large spectral range (7327 cm^-1) while decreasing the sensitivity to alignment with a field of view of 5.61 mm at 3m. We discuss the characteristics of the 1g-mSHRS by measuring the time-resolved remote Raman spectra of a few inorganic salts, organics, and minerals at 3 m. The 1g-mSHRS makes a good candidate for planetary exploration because of its large spectral range, greater sensitivity, competitively higher spectral resolution, low alignment sensitivity, and high light throughput in a compact easily aligned system with no moving parts.

Autostereoscopic-Raman Spectrometry-Based Three-Dimensional Metrology System for Measurements, Tracking and Identification in a Volume

Three-dimensional compound measurement within a volume of interest is of great importance in industrial manufacturing and the biomedical field. However, there is no current method that can simultaneously perform spatial localization and 3D measurement in a non-scanning manner as well as the identification of material in a volume. In this paper, an Autostereoscopic-Raman Spectrometry-based (ARS) three-dimensional measurement system is proposed. The target object in a large depth range is initially positioned by the autostereoscopic 3D measurement method, and then the accurate position information is cross-checked and obtained by combining the spectral signal. Meanwhile, the spectral signal at the precise excitation position guided by the autostereoscopic signal also carries the material composition information. In order to verify the proposed ARS method, an associated measurement system was developed, and experimental studies of detecting various fibers of different depths in multi-layer glass structure were conducted. The spatial locations and dimensional information of multiple different targets can be measured in a volume, and their material can also be identified at the same time. The average error between the calculated position processed by the ARS system and the actual spatial position is within sub-micron levels, and the success rate of spectrum acquisition reaches 98%.

Grating Spectrometry and Spatial Heterodyne Fourier Transform Spectrometry: Comparative Noise Analysis for Raman Measurements

The desire for portable Raman spectrometers is continuously driving the development of novel spectrometer architectures where miniaturisation can be achieved without the penalty of a poorer detection performance. Spatial heterodyne spectrometers are emerging as potential candidates for challenging the dominance of traditional grating spectrometers, thanks to their larger etendue and greater potential for miniaturisation. This paper provides a generic analytical model for estimating and comparing the detection performance of Raman spectrometers based on grating spectrometer and spatial heterodyne spectrometer designs by deriving the analytical expressions for the performance estimator (signal-to-noise ratio, SNR) for both types of spectrometers. The analysis shows that, depending on the spectral characteristics of the Raman light and on the values of some instrument-specific parameters, the ratio of the SNR estimates for the two spectrometers (RSNR) can vary as much as by two orders of magnitude. Limit cases of these equations are presented for a subset of spectral regimes which are of practical importance in real-life applications of Raman spectroscopy. In particular, under the experimental conditions where the background signal is comparable or larger than the target Raman line and shot noise is the dominant noise contribution, the value of RSNR is, to a first order of approximation, dependent solely on the relative values of each spectrometer's etendue and on the number of row pixels in the detector array. For typical values of the key instrument-specific parameters (e.g., etendue, number of pixels, spectral bandwidth), the analysis shows that spatial heterodyne spectrometer-based Raman spectrometers have the potential to compete with compact grating spectrometer designs for delivering in a much smaller footprint (10-30 times) levels of detection performance that are approximately only five to ten times poorer.