Question:
I would like to measure power and wavelength of various lasers and LEDs. I guess there must be a limit to how high power the integrating spheres (IC2 or IS6) can take. Do you know?
SpectraWizard’s Answer:
This question depends on if you are asking how much light will cause the system to saturate and not get the correct results or what power will burn the sphere. Typically, the answer to the saturation question depends on the size of the integrating sphere, the fiber optic cable diameter, and the spectrometer model (slit size, range, etc). Typically for the IS6 6” integrating sphere we recommend using the F600-VISNIR fiber optic cable and also a spectrometer with a 25um slit. Luckily being too bright is never really a problem as we can always add attenuation filters to the system. In this case you should look at the inline filter holder and add additional neutral density filters of known signal attenuation. This way you can reduce the light to the system and add the reduction factor into the software to get the proper results. A StellarNet applications engineer can help configure the perfect system for you. As for you a sphere damage threshold using a laser it is approximately 1.7 J/cm^2 but this will also depend on laser wavelength and the exact thickness of the coating applied. Customers can choose to attenuate their signal before entering the sphere or choose a customized sphere option specifically for higher powers. Likewise if you are concerned about having a laser with too high of a power we recommend attenuating the single first and slowly increasing the power to the system.
