TOWARD SINGLE-SHOT REAL-TIME SPECTROSCOPY OF DYNAMIC MATERIALS VIA WHITE-LIGHT AND SUPERCONTINUUM LIGHT SOURCES

In conventional camera or monochrometer-based spectroscopy, different wavelengths, spanning from short ultraviolet region to long infrared region, are calculated under stead-state conditions, with information gathered such as the dispersion curve or refractive index dependence on wavelength of any material. Although CCD arrays or CMOS cameras have gotten faster with time, the majority of analysis still remains in the relatively static or stead-state regime. Typical spectrometers used in university laboratories have a refresh rate of at most 120 Hz, which in time resolution results in 8.3 ms. A time period of 8.3 ms is still considered static for most temporally dynamic effects we might be looking for, such as phase transition in phase-change materials, conformal changes in molecules, microbial community evolution, among others. Dynamic spectroscopy is generally conducted via pump-probe methods that may not be suitable for many applications as they are not truly real-time, but depend on accumulating data repetitively over multiple scans. In this work, we present an evolution to the conventional spectrometers, increasing its speed by over 4 orders of magnitude while maintaining reasonable spectral resolution. We additionally present a path that combines our technique with supercontinuum light sources for even more ambitious future applications.