Time-Resolved Materials Characterization

What is time-resolved materials characterization?

Time-resolved materials characterization measures how a material responds in the first picoseconds to microseconds after optical or electrical excitation. Many material properties, such as carrier lifetimes, emission dynamics and phase transitions, only show up on these short timescales. Resolving them is essential for developing materials for electronics, photonics, quantum sensing, aerospace and renewable energy.

Materials science applications we support

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SLR and LiDAR: Solutions for High-Precision Remote Sensing

Next-generation multi-angle DLS turnkey design with built-in consistency checks, raw photon access, and intelligent spike filtering for fast, reliable particle sizing.

Laser ranging setups: (A) Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR) with a ground-based laser transmitting pulses to a satellite, returning single photons detected and processed through timing electronics for data acquisition; (B) Airborne LiDAR with an aircraft-mounted laser sending pulses to the ground, with reflected photons captured by detectors and processed by a PC for 3D mapping and evaluation.

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Optically Detected Magnetic Resonance (ODMR)

Optically detected magnetic resonance (ODMR) is a powerful technique widely used in quantum sensing, magnetic field measurement, and material analysis.

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Brillouin Light Scattering (BLS)

Brillouin Light Scattering (BLS) is a powerful optical spectroscopy technique used to probe phonons, magnons, and viscoelastic properties of materials across solid-state, biological, and sensing applications. Swabian Instruments Time Taggers play a critical role in modern BLS experiments by enabling picosecond-resolution photon time-stamping, reliable synchronization with interferometric setups, and real-time reconstruction of frequency-resolved spectra. By combining Time Taggers with Fabry–Pérot interferometry and single-photon detection, researchers achieve accurate, scalable, and time-resolved BLS measurements for materials science, spintronics, biomedical research, and remote sensing.

This figure illustrates the main perspective of a Brillouin Light Scattering experiment and the obtained data. On the left side, there is a drawing of a tissue sample that is scattering data after illumination. This medium is scattering light outwards. A Fabry-Pérot interferometer is included in the setup, and photon counts are detected using a single-photon detector. The data is then timestamped with a timing card. The resulting data on the left side includes a typical representation of the light intensity vs. frequency, representing scattering light as a consequence of Brillouin, Rayleigh, and Raman Scattering phenomena. The scattered light is overlaid on top of the incident light at the same frequency. The higher-frequency range corresponds to anti-Stokes light, and the lower-frequency spectrum corresponds to Stokes light.

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Electron Paramagnetic Resonance (EPR) / Electron Spin Resonance (ESR)

Electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) is a powerful spectroscopy technique used to study materials with unpaired electrons through continuous-wave or pulsed microwave measurements. Advanced pulsed EPR experiments require precise synchronization, nanosecond pulse control, and low timing jitter. The Swabian Instruments Pulse Streamer 8/2 provides the high-speed, multi-channel timing control needed to reliably orchestrate complex pulsed EPR experiments.

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Quantum Dot Single-Photon Sources

Swabian Instruments’ Time Tagger and Pulse Streamer provide picosecond-level timing resolution, fast digital pulse generation, and high data-throughput capabilities used in the characterization of quantum-dot single-photon sources.

Why is Time Tagging important for Materials Science?

Time-correlated single photon counting (TCSPC) lets researchers observe transient optical phenomena with picosecond precision. Swabian Instruments Time Taggers record the arrival time of every detected photon and stream the raw data, so lifetime histograms and time-resolved spectra can be built live and re-analyzed later. For experiments that need synchronized excitation pulses, gates and detectors, the Pulse Streamer Series provides the timing signals.

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