High resolution liquid crystal Fabry-Perot etalon provides a solid-state, tunable interferometer whose plate parallelism is fixed at the time of manufacture yet maintains tunability
Optical Surfaces has announced that it is a key component supplier to Scientific Solutions for its award winning NIR high resolution liquid crystal Fabry-Perot etalon (HR-LCFP), a next-generation tunable optical filter optimised for use in the near infrared.
Using proprietary manufacturing techniques in a thermally stable production environment has enabled Optical Surfaces to routinely supply batches of fused silica etalon pairs with industry leading accuracy to Scientific Solutions.
The demanding specifications required of the etalon pairs, to deliver the high performance of the HR-LCFP, was better than lambda/200 matching accuracy and surface roughness of less than 10 Angstroms.
The HR-LCFP provides a solid-state, tunable interferometer whose plate parallelism is fixed at the time of manufacture, yet maintains tunability over several orders of interference with a narrow bandpass and arbitrary resonant gap size.
The device utilises a thin liquid-crystal cell in its resonant cavity formed by the highly polished etalon substrates. The refractive index between the substrates is altered by varying an electric field across the liquid crystal.
The novel technology incorporated in the HR-LCFP allows rapid, precise and highly stable spectral selection.
Because the HR-LCFP is frequency agile, it enables nearly simultaneous measurement of multiple wavelengths in the NIR region.
Current applications for the HR-LCFP include laser tuning, lidar and narrowband spectral imaging.
Future use is anticipated in spectroscopic, telecommunications and spaceborne sensing applications.
