Development of mid-infrared optical multi-channel analyzer

Optical multi-channel analyzers (OMA) are an indispensable tool for a spectroscopic measurement in ultraviolet and visible region. In spite of the requirement for various scientific and/or industrial fields, however, there has been no practical OMA in the mid-infrared region, because of the following reasons: (1) there has been no suitable multi-channel detector for mid-infrared region, and (2) high sensitive detection is generally difficult due to a relatively low S/N ratio caused by a large background noise. In order to solve these problems, and to realize an IR-OMA, a newly developed focal plane array composed of mercury cadmium telluride (MCT), which has a reasonably short integration time, was employed as a multi-channel detector.