A Linear Photodiode Array Detector System for Multichannel Spectroscopic Applications

A Linear Photodiode Array Detector System for Multichannel Spectroscopic Applications

A multichannel optical detector system employing a self-scanning linear photodiode array has been developed. The photodiode array detector system is designed for various applications which require fast, multichannel detection of transient signals. The detector system consists of a controller which runs on an IBM personal computer and a detector head connected to the controller through a DB-15 cable. The entire scanning of 1024 detector elements is achieved in 20 ms. By using an on-board 16-bit counter/timer, the operational mode of the photodiode array detector is fully programmable by software. The design considerations and the performance of the photodiode array detector system is presented.