Xenon Flash Lamps

Xenon flash lamps are light sources that emit pulses of light at regular intervals, typically triggered by a signal function generator, a spectrometer or a detection system. Xenon flash lamps, with their high energy output, combined with high repeat rate, low heat generation and long lifetime (>10^9 flashes), are used in numerous UV-VIS spectroscopy and industrial applications such as water analysis, colorimetry or reflectometry.

The amount of energy contained in each pulse and the repeat rate depend on the internal main discharge capacitance of the flash lamp and on the main discharge voltage that can be set by the user, typically between 400 and 1,000V.

The emitted light, an almost instantaneous high peak output, covers the UV-VIS-NIR spectral region. Different window materials can be selected for specific spectral requirements.

The Xenon flash lamp produces a flash several microseconds after the trigger signal. Time jitter of a few hundreds of nanosecond also occurs at each flash. This time delay and time jitter must be factored in when triggering / synchronizing the spectrometer electronics for full capture of the flash.

tec5USA has developed high-end Xenon flash lamp drive electronics to work in conjunction with our families of spectrometers and sensors. tec5USA “BEKFLASH” electronics can create multiple trigger pulses out of one main pulse from the operating electronics. The cycle is started by this trigger pulse, n trigger pulses with the selected timing / frequency are then generated by the trigger board within one scan. Used with tec5 Operating Electronics for photodiode arrays and spectral sensors, controlling the number of flashes in a series within an integration period allows to change the light level and results in an improvement of the signal-to-noise ratio by accumulating and averaging multiple flashes.