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What is a Spectrometer?

A spectrometer in the broadest sense is any instrument used to measure the variation of a physical property over a given range; That’s a spectrum. In the case of a mass spectrometer, this is the mass-to-charge ratio spectrum, the variation of nuclear resonance frequencies in an NMR spectrometer, or the change in light absorption and emission with wavelength in a spectrometer. optical.

The most omnipresent type of spectrometer used for investigation are optical spectrometers; And when someone says ‘spectrometer’ without an additional qualification, they usually mean an optical spectrometer, and this diverse family of spectrometers is the focus of this article.

How Does an Optical Spectrometer Work?

The goal of any visual spectrometer is to amount the interaction of electromagnetic radiation with a sample (absorption, reflection, scattering) or the emission of electromagnetic radiation from a sample (fluorescence, phosphorescence, electroluminescence). Optical spectrometers measure light in the ultraviolet, visible, and infrared wavelength regions of the spectrum corresponding to electromagnetic radiation that falls within the optical region of the electromagnetic spectrum.

To obtain maximum information, the correlation or emission of light must be measured as a function of wavelength, and a common feature of all optical spectrometers is a mechanism for wavelength selection. In low-cost spectrometers or in situations where precise wavelength selection is not important, optical filters are used to isolate the wavelength area of interest. However, accurate wavelength selection and spectra generation require a scattering element that separates light into its component wavelengths. In all modern spectrometers, this scattering element is a diffraction grating, where constructive and destructive interferences are used to spatially separate polychromatic light incident on the grating (Figure 2).