Compact, low cost, wide band, high resolution integrated digital spectrometer on a chip

ABSTRACT: Leveraging Agiltron industry leading development and production of spectrometer systems and components and wide band sensor arrays, we propose to develop a new class of high performance compact, high resolution, wide band spectrometer-on-a-chip. The approach is closely coupled with recent progress in miniature spectrometer and sensor array to push the performance well beyond the current state-of-the-art. The proposed spectrometer is based on computer-generated digital planar holograms which involves millions of lines specifically positioned and oriented so as to direct output light into design-specified focal points according to the wavelength. The sensor array will be integrated on the same chip. The spectrometer will be fabricated on a silicon substrate, which allows further integration with CMOS data processing. The technical approach will be proven in Phase I through the numerical analysis, design and experiments. The ortable prototype spectrometer will be produced in Phase II for delivery to the Air Force. BENEFIT: Optical spectrometers have a wide range of technological, medical, and industrial applications. They are widely used in research laboratories, hospitals, educational institutes, fiber-optic industries, and environmental engineering industries. The advent in technologies, however lead to more sophisticated instrumentations that has to be highly portable in the field for rapid analysis of biological/medical, chemical, or environmental samples. The entire optical spectrum analysis instrumentation market is a billion-dollar market. While optical spectrometers play key roles in various applications, they remain to be one of the largest optical instrumentations, and one of the most costly, occupying a size of tens of centimeters for a compact version to a few meters for a table-top version, and costing ~$5,000 for a compact version to $30,000 for a table top version. The proposed approach will develop spectrometer-on-a-chip with dramatically reduced size and cost so that a portable spectrometer will be affordable for pervasive application.