Upgrade of picosecond lifetime fluorometer

申请资金升级我们现有的实验室建造的皮秒时间分辨荧光计。荧光计是我们实验室最常用的光谱仪之一。它构成了我们许多合作的基础。我们经常有来自美国，欧洲和加拿大其他实验室的访客来布罗克使用这台仪器。微通道板（MCP）光电倍增管是决定仪器时间分辨率的时间敏感探测器。这些都是昂贵的，有一个有限的寿命。由于我们的MCP恶化，我们仪器的时间分辨率在去年从不足50ps下降到超过110ps。虽然听起来差别不大，但时间分辨率已经下降了两倍，我们真的需要在50ps以下才能“看到”我们正在测量的反应。该仪器的另一个关键部分是脉冲光源。我们使用的二极管激光器已经有10多年的历史了。它在我们的系统中以“刚刚好”的强度开始存在，但现在已降至临界水平以下。我们请求资金升级我们的仪器与一个新的微通道板和一个新的脉冲二极管激光器。这两个要求的项目都超过了我们的原始项目，我们应该达到更高的时间分辨率，这对我们的研究至关重要。

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.