The Single-Shot Femtosecond Hyperspectral Camera.

The basis of the project was seeded from a STFC IAA grant `3D Laser Spectrometer' (KCD00170) and a STFC IPS Fellow Discretionary Fund, awarded June 2017. The project arose from the need for a novel diagnostic to support the plasma accelerator research of STFC grants ST/J002011/1 and ST/M007375/1. The IAA grant has allowed a working single-shot hyperspectral camera to be built and a single-shot ultrafast videography camera to be developed. The development of the instruments has attracted the attention of companies seeking the commercialisation of the cameras. During the development of the instruments, the wide scope of applications was outlined, and directions of future development were made clear. The STFC follow-on fund will prove the commercial capabilities of the Single-Shot Hyperspectral Protocol (SHP) and facilitate the development of an affordable ultrafast femtosecond imaging protocol.

The fund will allow extending the current proof-of-concept camera to suit the needs for active monitoring and detection of industrial chemicals. Each year around 13,000 deaths are estimated to have been caused by past chemical exposure, at work. Many of the deaths were preventable, involving past chemical exposure unbeknownst to the workers at the time. The commercialisation of an affordable and rapidly deployable hyperspectral camera such as the SHP would ensure occupational health and safety through early detection of fugitive process emissions while mitigating costly pauses in production. Hyperspectral chemical monitoring can also contribute in the optimization of chemical production efficiency and in the quality assurance of industrial and agricultural products.

The follow-on fund will also bring the newly developed Ultrafast Single-shot Hyperspectral Protocol (USHP) to a marketable stage. The fund will also enable upgrades to the USHP, improving videography resolution by one hundred percent. Ultrafast videography is an invaluable tool in the study of plasmas, photochemistry, photovolataics, spintronics, materials, fluidics, and protein biology. Currently, the pump-probe method is the go-to method for ultrafast imaging, but the method requires repetitive measurements to construct a video - falling short in probing non-repetitive events. Comparable ultrafast methods, such as streaks cameras are costly and also fall short in video frame rate when compared to the SHP - which is expected to capture videos at 50 trillion frames per second in its current iteration, a new world record. The availability of a commercially ultrafast imaging system will democratise ultrafast science - a field that has been confined to national laboratories and oversubscribed user facilities, with few exceptions.