Advantages:
The Pendium™ interferometer design enables a small,
rugged, and inexpensive interferometer construction with
the performance of an expensive laboratory instrument.
Pendium™ interferometer is composed of 7 plane mirrors
and a beamsplitter. The alignment of the interferometer
is simple since all the plane mirrors are fixed and the
alignment is carried out by adjusting the beamsplitter.
Potential Application(s)
• Small portable FT-IR spectrometers that require the accuracy
of a laboratory instrument
• FT-UV spectrometers
Description
This invention was motivated by overcoming some disadvantages
in the Noveltech’s Carousel™ interferometer
design. A possible realization of the new Pendium™
design is shown in Fig. 1. The mirrors 14, 15, 16, and
17 are rotating back and forth around the axis A perpendicular
to the plane of the figure in order to gain the optical
path difference. The beams are recto-reflected back from
the moving mirror system parallel with the incoming beams.
Since in the Pendium™ interferometer the angle between
incident and reflected beams is zero or very close to
zero, it has a few extra advantages over the Carousel™
design. The Pendium™ interferometer does not suffer
from tilts of the rotation axis. The optical path difference
is very linear and the beams are practically not moving
on any mirror at all as a function the rotation angle.
Thus these advantages provide very high resolution to
the Pendium™ interferometer. The resolution of 0.1
1/cm is easily attained with a compact construction.
Fig.
1. Optical layout of the Pendium™ interferometer.
Fig.
2. A prototype of the Pendium™
interferometer (width = 11 cm)
Technology Commercialization Status:
• The Pendium™ interferometer technology is licensed
exclusively to Bruker Optik GmbH
