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FPGA-based photon-counting phase-modulation fluorometer and a brief comparison with that operated in a pulsed-excitation mode

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Abstract

We have constructed a high-efficiency, photon-counting phase-modulation fluorometer (PC-PMF) using a field-programmable gate array, which is a modified version of the photon-counting fluorometer (PCF) that works in a pulsed-excitation mode (Iwata and Mizuno in Meas Sci Technol 28:075501, 2017). The common working principle for both is the simultaneous detection of the photoelectron pulse train, which covers 64 ns with a 1.0-ns resolution time (1.0 ns/channel). The signal-gathering efficiency was improved more than 100 times over that of conventional time-correlated single-photon-counting at the expense of resolution time depending on the number of channels. The system dead time for building a histogram was eliminated, markedly shortening the measurement time for fluorescent samples with moderately high quantum yields. We describe the PC-PMF and make a brief comparison with the pulsed-excitation PCF in precision, demonstrating the potential advantage of PC-PMF.

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Notes

  1. For, example, a multichannel-TAC NAES-500/550 system had been manufactured by HORIBA Ltd. (Kyoto, Japan) from 1982 to 2000.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate School of Science and Technology, Tokushima University, 2-1 Minami-Jyosanjima, Tokushima, 770-8506, Japan

    Tetsuo Iwata, Takanori Taga & Takahiko Mizuno

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  1. Tetsuo Iwata
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  2. Takanori Taga
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  3. Takahiko Mizuno
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Correspondence to Tetsuo Iwata.

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Iwata, T., Taga, T. & Mizuno, T. FPGA-based photon-counting phase-modulation fluorometer and a brief comparison with that operated in a pulsed-excitation mode. Opt Rev 25, 94–101 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10043-017-0401-4

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