HORIBA Worldwide

You can design your own time correlated single photon counting spectrofluorometers using IBH components available from Jobin Yvon. With the unification of IBH and SPEX® products, the versatility and ultimate sensitivity of TCSPC is possible for all budgets. Choose the broad wavelength range of a flashlamp for excitation, or the speed and power of a laser diode or LED from a NanoLED source. No matter what you select, you always have the modular flexibility and years of experience built in as well as the TCSPC expertise that has made SPEX^®-IBH the leader in time domain acquisition.

TCSPC measurements use a pulsed lightsource and a circuit to detect single photon fluorescence at a detector. In a repetitive series of many start stop signals from the circuitry, a binned histogram in time channels of single photon counts is gradually generated. Fluorescence lifetimes can be obtained in seconds to minutes with repetition rates in the MHz range. In addition, the decay statistics are Poissonian, allowing the data to be rigorously analyzed. The time domain components available from SPEX^®-IBH use our NanoLED series of precise and inexpensive pulsed light emitting diodes and diode laser sources. The single photon detection method is preferred when photon emission is too weak for frequency domain detection.

Light sources from SPEX^®-IBH include the nanosecond and picosecond pulsed NanoLEDs from UV (280 nm) to near-IR (830 nm), the microsecond pulsed SpectraLEDs for phosphorescence measurements, the broad band 5000F coaxial nanosecond flashlamp, and the sub-microsecond 5000XeF xenon flashlamp for weak phosphorescence measurements. Modules available include the FluoroCube sample chamber, pulse converter and discriminator, specially designed monochromators, NIM modules, high speed preamplifiers, and power supplies. We replace the standard R928 photomultiplier tube with the TBX-04 detector. Options include extended red and thermoelectrically cooled detection, pus microchannel plate detection for lowest transit time spread (25 ps).

Pulsed light source (gray) and response (black) of the sample, POPOP, showing the gradual decay of fluorescence intensity with time. A single exponential fit (dotted red) gives a lifetime of 1.309 ± 0.003 ns.