Scatterings
A Teeny, Tiny Spectrometer
Graduate student Benjamin Lee of Harvard University and his colleagues recently demonstrated a light source that provides a broad range of wavelengths.
A dime dwarfs an array of 32 tiny quantum-cascade lasers on a single chip. The array can provide an integrated light source for optofluidic chips, including spectrometers. Squares on the bottom portion of the chip are gold pads for wire bonding.
Infrared spectrometry is tremendously useful for identifying chemicals, but it requires a light source that can provide many different wavelengths. Lab-on-a-chip devices that incorporate spectrometry are no different, but they add the requirement that the light source be very small.
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