AOTF spectrometer for water pollutant monitoring

The requirement for providing the soldier with clean drinking water is of utmost importance to the Department of Defense. A new joint: services project has been initiated to carry out the research and development needed to find an experimental method suitable for this task. One of the techniques identified for this purpose is Raman spectroscopy, which provides highly reliable spectral signatures for chemicals and can be used as fingerprints for their identification. We at the Army Research Laboratory have been working on the development of a small, field-portable, rugged, high-resolution, high-sensitivity spectrometer that can be used in a very compact setup to carry out Raman spectral measurements for the detection of water pollutants. The spectrometer has been used to measure Raman spectra of nerve agent simulants.