Major Research Techniques

Spectroscopy

  • Multi-Colour and White Light Pump-probe transient absorption (femtoseconds to seconds)
  • Multi-Colour Spectrally Resolved Three-Pulse Photon Echo Peak Shift
  • Femtosecond Kerr-gated fluorescence
  • Femtosecond fluorescence upconversion
  • Stimulated emission decay measurements
  • Picosecond fluorescence measurements by Time-Correlated Single Photon Counting (TCSPC)

Time-Resolved Fluorescence Spectroscopy and Anisotropy (Bulk)

Equipment

Femtosecond (Coherent Amplified System)

  • A mode-locked titanium sapphire laser (Mira-Seed: 20 fs, 76 MHz, 0.5 W) pumped by a Verdi G20 (20W, 532nm)
  • Biophotonics Solutions MIIPS 640P pulse shaper
  • A chirped-pulse regenerative-amplifier (RegA9050: <50 fs, 10-250 kHz, 0.1-2.5 W)
  • Two optical parametric amplifiers (OPA9050: ~50 fs, [>nJ] 400 nm, [~0.15 nJ] 480-700 nm, [~20 pJ] 900-2300 nm)

Femtosecond (High-Repetition)

  • A cavity-dumped mode-locked titanium sapphire laser (Mira 900/PulseSwitch: ~120 fs, 76 MHz and 54 MHz to 200 Hz, 710-900 nm, ~40 nJ)
  • Doubler and Tripler (240-300 nm, 350-450 nm)
  • Optical Parametric Oscillator (APE: intracavity doubled)

Femtosecond (High-Repetition)

  • KML Ti:sapp. oscillator (15 fs @ 80 MHz)

Picosecond

  • Fianium SC450-PP-HE super-continuum laser
  • NKT super-continuum laser/Varia
  • Time-Bandwidth Products Cheetah X, frequency doubled picosecond Nd:Vanadate laser
  • Two cavity-dumped dye lasers (Spectra Physics)

Nanosecond

  • Q-Switched Nd:YAG/Optical parametric oscillator (Ekspla NT342B-10-SH/SFG extension, >30mJ@450nm; 410-2600nm, >6 mJ@340nm; 225-409nm)
  • NKT SuperK COMPACT supercontinuum laser (tunable ~450-750nm, variable (kHz-MHz) repetition rate, ~100ps pulses)

Microscopes

  • Laser Scanning Confocal (Olympus IX71/FV300)
  • TIRF (Nikon TE2000)
  • Structured Illumination Microscopy
  • Scanning near field optical microscopy (SNOM) (Nanonics)
  • STED microscopy
  • Single Molecule
  • EMCCD (Roper)
  • sCMOS (Andor)

Time-resolved microscopy techniques

  • TCSPC (Becker and Hickl SPC830 & SPC150, EI TCC900 cards)
  • Gated photon counting (Nikon LIMO)
  • High repetition rate intensified CCD camera (La Vision PicoStarHR)