TeraFERMI offline

The TeraFERMI laboratory is now equipped with a THz Time-Domain-Spectrometer (THz-TDS) based on photoconductive antennas providing a spectral range between 0.1-3 THz. The frequency span overlaps with the TeraFERMI beamline's THz spectrum and completes the facility possibilities with linear spectroscopy as a new characterization tool. 

The system is based on a Menlo C-Fiber 780 laser system operating at 80 MHz coupled with photoconductiva antennas PCA-40-05-10-800-h and bPCA-100-05-10-800-h from Batop optoelectronics.

THz-TDS spectrometer allows  probing the transmission properties of materials both in amplitude and phase, thereby allowing a complete direct characterization of the complex dielectric constant without the need of using Kramers-Kronig Transformations as in FTIR.

THz spectroscopy is non-ionizing and therefore safe to use on biological molecules and tissues, and provides a significant chemical specificity allowing to distinguish polymorphic forms of many molecules of pharmaceutical interest, narcotics, explosives, etc. THz radiation is also highly penetrating therby allowing to address buried layers trough visually opaque materials.