Miniaturized NIR spectrometers - state of the art & recent developments

For non-destructive quality testing near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy in the wavelength range from 1000-2300 nm has become a well established method in various sectors. For example NIR spectroscopy is being applied in food inspection, agriculture, recycling industry, process control and environmental monitoring. Classical, rather bulky bench-top NIR spectrometers are the workhorses in many laboratories. For a more widespread application several approaches using diode detector arrays, filter techniques and digital light processing have been proposed and realized in first products. However, with an increasing demand for on the spot, mobile sensing new development tasks arise. A promising approach for further size and cost reduction for NIR spectrometers is MEMS-technology using silicon based miniaturized components for system realization. We will present state of the art & recent developments in this field.