SBIR Phase I: Ultra-Compact, Low-Cost, and Robust Volume Holographic Spectrometers

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I research project is focused on the feasibility study of a new class of ultra-compact, low-cost, robust, and alignment insensitive spectrometer for diffuse source spectroscopy with better overall performance compared to conventional slit-based spectrometers using specially-designed volume holograms as dispersive elements. The resulting spectrometers are composed of only a volume hologram and a detector array. Thus, it is ultra-compact, lightweight, low-cost, and insensitive to input alignment. Moreover, due to excellent design flexibility of the volume holograms, this technology enables the custom design of the spectrometer without adding any complexity into the system. The performance measures (such as resolution, operation bandwidth, and throughput) of the proposed spectrometer will be either comparable or better than all implementations of the conventional slit-based spectrometers. The proposed spectrometer will have a broad range of applications in the fields of biochemistry, medicine, pharmaceuticals, industrial quality assurance, homeland security, mineralogy, and environmental purposes. Specifically, in the applications where the light source has a diffuse nature (e.g., fluorescence spectroscopy) the developed spectrometer will show the best sensitivity among existing technologies. The ultra-compact lightweight nature of the proposed spectrometers makes them a perfect choice of handheld sensing devices that are of high current demand in several fields mentioned above.