Multiwavelength thermal lens spectrophotometer based on an acousto-optic tunable filter

The instrumentation development of a novel, all solid-state, nonmoving parts, fast-scanning and wide-tuning range multiwavelength thermal lens spectrophotometer based on the acousto-optic tunable filter (AOTF) is described. Initially, the essential electronic driver was developed to facilitate the systematic characterization of the paratellurite (TeO2) AOTF and to demonstrate that this filter can be successfully and uniquely used as an all solid-state, nonmoving parts dispersive device to rapidly diffract white incident light into a selected color beam, to amplitude modulate the diffracted monochromatic light, and to keep its intensity constant. The multiwavelength thermal lens instrument was subsequently constructed using this AOTF, and preliminary results on advantages of this spectrophotometer such as its ability to characterize trace chemicals and to analyze multicomponent samples are delineated.