A fully integrated Z-scan instrument for optical-nonlinearity characterization of novel nanomaterials
Designing and building a turnkey Z-scan system to characterize optical nonlinearities in novel Group IV-derived nanomaterials — integrating motion, a Ti:Sapphire laser, an optical parametric oscillator, and IR detectors under one custom .NET application, with results flowing into a company-wide LIMS.
Customer
A company developing novel Group IV-derived nanomaterials that needed to measure the optical nonlinearities of its materials — properties with no off-the-shelf instrument that fit the samples, the wavelengths, and the lab's data systems.
Challenge
Characterizing optical nonlinearity calls for a Z-scan: translating a sample through a focused, high-intensity beam and measuring how its transmittance changes with intensity to extract nonlinear absorption and refraction. Doing it for these materials meant tunable ultrafast excitation, sensitive detection into the infrared, precise sample positioning, and tightly synchronized acquisition — a set of instruments that don't come integrated. Just as important, the measurements couldn't live as one-off files on a lab PC; they had to land in the company's central data system to be useful across the organization.
Solution
We designed and built the complete Z-scan instrument — hardware integration through software — and wired it into the company's data infrastructure.
- Integrated the full optical and mechanical chain: precision motion systems to translate the sample through focus, a Ti:Sapphire ultrafast laser, an optical parametric oscillator for tunable wavelength, and infrared detectors.
- Wrote a custom .NET application for unified instrument control, synchronized acquisition, and analysis — one operator interface driving the whole measurement.
- Designed a custom file format for the Z-scan data that interfaced directly with the company-wide LIMS — which bisArray also built — so every measurement flowed into the central system automatically, traceable and reusable across the organization.
The result was a turnkey Z-scan characterization tool purpose-built for the customer's novel nanomaterials, with acquisition, analysis, and LIMS capture integrated end to end — no manual data shuffling between the instrument and the rest of the company's data.