Spectroscopy techniques

Time-resolved absorption and fluorescence spectroscopy techniques to study living molecules

The specificity of the DICO group lies in its use of high-performance time-resolved spectroscopy. Moreover, DNA, its constituents and proteins are fragile molecular assemblies.

This is why particular attention is paid to excitation energy and sample handling.

Time-resolved fluorescence (fluorescence decays, fluorescence anisotropy decays and time-resolved fluorescence spectra) can be recorded between 100 fs and 100 ns using a combination of two detection techniques: frequency sum (or up-conversion) of fluorescence and time-correlated single-photon counting (TCSPC).

A key advantage is the use of the same laser excitation source: a femtosecond titanium:sapphire laser.

Nanosecond flash photolysis enables us to track singlet or triplet excited states of transient species between around 10 ns and 100 ms. A particular feature of our installation is the detection of weak signals (10-4 in absorbance).