I was often asked for the details of the modification we did on the Voyager STR to make it an imaging instrument. In this topic I’m summarizing our experiences and hope that other will do too.
First of all, we could use the STR for imaging without any modifications. Ours came with a N2 laser and a LeCroy LSA digitizer, which allowed us to acquire spectra at a rate of 20 Hz. Two factors made us modify the instrument: the lifetime of the plasma cartridge was specified to only 10 Mio shots and we wanted to acquire our images as fast as possible. In effect, we replaced our N2 laser with a powerchip laser from Nanolase. This company belongs now to JDS Uniphase and they still sell the laser. We have a PNV-1025 with 20 uJ pulse energy and a repetition rate of up to 500Hz. We switched also the digitizer to a DP211 board from Aquiris which can keep up with higher repetition rates. All in all, we can now acquire spectra at a rate of up to 160 Hz, depending on the number of data points.
We have been using the STR in this configuration for about 5 years and are still happy with it. Will it work for you? I don’t know since every STR seems to be different. I guess it’s just a matter of asking ABI for details … no guarantee from my side 😉 .
markus
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