Upgrade of picosecond lifetime fluorometer

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Funding is requested to upgrade our existing laboratory built picosecond time resolved fluorometer. The fluorometer is one of the most frequently used spectrometers in our laboratory. It forms the basis of many of our collaborations. We have frequent visitors from the US, Europe and other labs in Canada who come to Brock to use this instrument. The microchannel plate (MCP) photomultiplier is the time sensitive detector which sets the time resolution of the instrument. These are expensive and have a limited lifetime. The time resolution of our instrument has dropped from less than 50ps to over 110ps in the last year due to deterioration of our MCP. Although it might not sound like a big difference, the time resolution has dropped by a factor of two and we really need to be under 50ps to "see" the reactions we are measuring. The other critical part of the instrument is the pulsed light source. We use a diode laser which is now well over 10 years old. It started life in our system with "just enough" intensity but is now falling below that critical level.  We are requesting funds to upgrade our instrument with a new microchannel plate and a new pulsed diode laser. Both requested items surpass our originals and we should attain an even higher time resolution which is critical to our studies.