Pyroelectric vidicon: a new multichannel spectrometric infrared (1.0-30-microm) detector

A pyroelectric (triglycine sulfate) vidicon tube has been used in conjunction with an optical multichannel analyzer (OMA) to obtain ir (1-30-microm) spectral information. The system can detect continuous as well as pulsed ir signals. Improvement of SNR through accumulation of data in memory has been demonstrated. Various parameters that affect the performance of the system include variation of sensitivity across the target, thermal diffusion, discharge lag, thermal lag, and noise. The applicability of the system to ir absorption and laser (cw and pulsed emission) spectrometry has been demonstrated.