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TCC900

The TCC900 is a plug-in computer card with PCI interface, which incorporates all the electronic modules required for Time Correlated Single Photon Counting (TCSPC). This includes constant fraction discriminators, variable nanosecond delays, time to amplitude converter and large memory for multi-channel analysis.

The TCC900 card transforms a historically complex and cumbersome TCSPC set-up into no more than a pulsed light source, a detector and a PC. All that is required to perform TCSPC measurements is an optical trigger pulse from the excitation light source and the raw detector output from a single photon counting detector connected to the START and STOP inputs on the TCC900 respectively.

All the important operating parameters of the TCC900 are fully computer controlled. This includes discrimator thresholds, zero crossing levels, frequency dividers, shifting delays and time offsets, time range and number of data channels, switch between forward and reverse mode, stop conditions etc.

The performance achieved with the TCC900 card surpasses that obtained using even the best conventional timing electronics.

The TCC900 has selectable TAC ranges from 2.5ns to 50μs, which can be divided into 4096 (or 2048,1024, 512) data channels. This corresponds to a minimum channel width of 610fs.

The low dead time between events allows measurements to be converted at MHz rates. With high repetition rate laser sources this means that high quality TCSPC measurements can be acquired in seconds or even less.

The low timing jitter and excellent differential non-linearity mean that the TCC900 imposes only a minimal limitation to the shortest lifetime which can be measured. Indeed, in combination with fs laser excitation and MCP-PMT detection the TCC900 can measure lifetimes down to a few picoseconds.

The TCC900 can be supplied with full data acquisition and analysis software, as in the Edinburgh Instruments range of fluorescence lifetime spectrometers, or with a software development kit for easy OEM integration.

The TCC card features:-
• PCI interface
• Time ranges from 2.5ns to 50µs full scale
• Time resolution from 610fs/ch
• Ultra-low time jitter < 25ps
• Forward and reverse modes
• Exceptional differential non-linearity
• Integrated shifting delays
• Comprehensive software for WINDOWS ^(TM)
• Extensive data analysis libraries

SPECIFICATIONS OF TCC900