Brillouin HyperFine Spectrometer

Fast Brillouin measurements for a wide variety of materials — biological, industrial, magnons, and materials under high pressure

The great challenge with Brillouin spectroscopy is that the elastically-scattered Rayleigh signal from the pump laser can overwhelm the small Brillouin-shifted return signal.  We have combined our leading-edge HyperFine spectrometer with a very narrow, tunable notch filter to suppress the bright pump laser frequency. The tunable filter, called the Pump Killer (PK), is easily adjusted to suppress the Rayleigh peak with attenuation greater than 60 dB. When combined with our high resolution, high contrast, high throughput HyperFine spectrometer, the system achieves a total contrast greater than 120 dB with sub-GHz resolution, making it perfectly suited to measure weak Brillouin signals.

LightMachinery’s proprietary fluid jet polishing process is utilized to create both the tunable etalon filter and the main VIPA etalon in the spectrometer.  The result of the combination of the high finesse elements is unparalleled sensitivity, compact size, and high optical throughput that enables the Brillouin HyperFine Spectrometer, HF-8999-PK, to make rapid measurements of Brillouin scattering that have not previously been possible.  Changes in the state of samples can be observed in real-time. To demonstrate, take a look at this quick video showing the Brillouin shift of Loctite 495 instant glue as it sets. Note the fast shift at the 100-second mark.

Check out the latest research papers that have been published by researchers using the HyperFine spectrometers here.

Complete Brillouin Systems (laser, confocal setup, and microscope)

In addition to the spectrometer, LightMachinery has developed a complete Brillouin system that includes a high-power laser, the VIPA-based Brillouin HyperFine spectrometer, a confocal box sending the laser to the microscope and returning the scattered signal to the spectrometer,  a Nikon microscope with motorized XY scanning system to produce fast 2D Brillouin maps, all required software, computer hardware, keyboard, and monitor.  Everything that is required to create Brillouin shift maps of your samples.  Contact us for more details.

Interested in learning more?  Here is a list of recent white papers:

Brillouin Spectrum of Bovine Bones
Sophie Chagnon-Lessard

Technical Note – Dependence of the precision of Brillouin shifts on the SNR of the signal
Sophie Chagnon-Lessard

Preliminary Brillouin measurements of a cow’s liver
Greg Wardle, Hubert Jean-Ruel, Sophie Chagnon-Lessard

Measuring Magnons, Spin Wave Brillouin Spectroscopy with the LightMachinery HyperFine Spectrometer
Sophie Chagnon-Lessard

Mapping the Mechanical Properties of Cells via Brillouin Spectroscopy
Sophie Chagnon-Lessard, Hubert Jean-Ruel, Greg Wardle, Evgueni Ponomarev

Brillouin Spectroscopy of a Plastic Film
Sophie Chagnon-Lessard

Brillouin Spectroscopy of Nb2O5 Thin Films
Sophie Chagnon-Lessard

Brillouin Spectroscopy in a Diamond Anvil Cell
Sophie Chagnon-Lessard & David Walker

Brillouin Spectroscopy of a Silicon Wafer 
Sophie Chagnon-Lessard

 See our Research Papers page for a semi-complete list of published research papers that use our HyperFine spectrometers.

Sectional Brillouin map of a 500um acrylic fiber submerged in water. An area of 1mm X 1mm was covered with 25um steps, 300 ms per point, and 20 mW at the sample. 1681 points were thus acquired with <9 min total exposure time. There were no issue at the water acrylic interface where the Brillouin to pump ratio was on the order of 106:1

Pushing acquisition speed: extremely fast acquisition and high repeatability. 20 successive spectra, methanol, 25 mW at sample, GK by-passed, Lorentzian fits, standard deviation of the Brillouin shift. Stay tuned for updated results soon as we launch our new confocal microscope, leading to >2 times faster acquisition!

Brillouin shift from Magnons, the substrate is MgO, with a thin CoFe magnetic layer, and Cr capping layer, 20mW laser with a 5 second exposure, averaged 5 times. The signal is clear and can be optimized with only 0.5 second exposures. Laser side modes from the massively suppressed pump laser are also visible