Ocean Optics Overture User Manual

Installation

Software User’s Guide
Document Number 000-20000-400-01-201108

Offices: Ocean Optics, Inc. World Headquarters

830 Douglas Ave., Dunedin, FL, USA 34698

Phone [phone]
Fax [phone]

8 a.m.– 8 p.m. (Mon-Thu), 8 a.m.– 6 p.m. (Fri) EST

E-mail: [e-mail] (General sales inquiries)

[e-mail] (Questions about orders)
[e-mail] (Technical support)

Additional
Offices:

Regional Headquarters
Maybachstrasse 11
73760 Ostfildern

Phone [phone]
Fax [phone]
E-Mail [e-mail]

Ocean Optics Asia

666 Gubei Road, Kirin Tower, Suite 601B, Changning District,
Shanghai, PRC. 200336

Phone [phone]

Fax [phone]
E-Mail [e-mail]

Ocean Optics EMEA

Sales and Support Center
Geograaf 24, 6921 EW DUIVEN, The Netherlands

Phone [phone]

Fax [phone]
E-Mail

[e-mail]

Copyright © 2011 Ocean Optics, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from Ocean Optics, Inc.
This manual is sold as part of an order and subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or
otherwise circulated without the prior consent of Ocean Optics, Inc. in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published.

Trademarks

All products and services herein are the trademarks, service marks, registered trademarks or registered service marks of their respective owners.

Limit of Liability

Ocean Optics has made every effort to ensure that this manual as complete and as accurate as possible, but no warranty or fitness is implied. The
information provided is on an “as is” basis. Ocean Optics, Inc. shall have neither liability nor responsibility to any person or entity with respect to
any loss or damages arising from the information contained in this manual.

Table of Contents

About This Manual......................................................................................................... v

Document Purpose and Intended Audience..............................................................................v

Document Summary..................................................................................................................v

Product-Related Documentation ............................................................................................... v

Upgrades....................................................................................................................... vi

Chapter 1: Introduction to Spectroscopy.........................................1

Spectroscopy in a nutshell............................................................................................. 1

Spectroscope views....................................................................................................... 2

The CCD array spectrometer......................................................................................... 3

Optical Limitations ..................................................................................................................... 3

Chapter 3: Overture Software ........................................................... 5

Product Overview .......................................................................................................... 5

Overture Installation ...................................................................................................... 6

Retrieving from a CD .................................................................................................................6

Downloading from the Ocean Optics Website...........................................................................6

Chapter 3: Overture Software Icons and Menus..............................7

Overview ....................................................................................................................... 7

Integration Time............................................................................................................. 9

Intensity

Store Dark Spectrum

Reference spectrum

Color

Transmission

Absorbance

Smoothing ..................................................................................................................... 11

Average scans ...........................................................................................................................11

Pixel smoothing ......................................................................................................................... 11

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................................................................................................................... 9

.............................................................................................. 9

.............................................................................................. 9

........................................................................................................................ 10

.......................................................................................................... 10

............................................................................................................. 11

Table of Contents

Copy Data to Clipboard ........................................................................................... 12

Snapshot

Zoom

Open Spectrum

............................................................................................................... 12

.................................................................................................... 13

................................................................................................... 13

Cursor ........................................................................................................................... 14

Reference Lines

.................................................................................................... 15

Menu Functions............................................................................................................. 17

File Menu ...................................................................................................................................17

New............................................................................................................................................ 19

Window ......................................................................................................................................19

Help ........................................................................................................................................... 19

Chapter 4: Experiments.....................................................................21

Concentration wizard ............................................................................................ 21

Fluorescence................................................................................................................. 25

Chapter 5: Applications.....................................................................29

Physics applications ...................................................................................................... 29

The sun...................................................................................................................................... 29

Fluorescent lamps ..................................................................................................................... 30

Filters, solutions and glasses .................................................................................................... 30

Reflection of light from colored surfaces ................................................................................... 31

Ionized gases and metal vapors................................................................................................31

Hydrogen spectrum Balmer lines .............................................................................................. 32

Flame emissions........................................................................................................................ 32

Lasers ........................................................................................................................................33

Chemistry applications................................................................................................... 34

Spectral signatures.................................................................................................................... 34

Flame tests ................................................................................................................................ 34

Transmission, absorbance and the concept of Absorbance Number .......................................34

Beers law using KMnO

Determination of the pKa of bromocresol green .......................................................................34

Spectrophotometric analysis of commercial aspirin .................................................................. 35

Spectrophotometric determination of an equilibrium constant .................................................. 35

............................................................................................................. 34

4

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Table of Contents

Water quality testing using indicator reagents...........................................................................35

Appendix A: Sample Experiments....................................................37

Beer’s law analysis of KMnO4........................................................................................ 37

Chlorophyll detection in olive oils................................................................................... 38

Flame tests.................................................................................................................... 39

Spectrophototmetric analysis of a buffer solution – Isobestic point ................................ 41

Fluorescence and Stokes shift....................................................................................... 42

Appendix B: Maintenance .................................................................43

Fiber care ...................................................................................................................... 43

Spectrometer care......................................................................................................... 43

Troubleshooting............................................................................................................. 44

FAQs ............................................................................................................................. 44

Index ...................................................................................................47

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Table of Contents

iv 000-20000-400-01-201108

About This Manual

Document Purpose and Intended Audience

This document provides you with installation and operation instructions for your Overture software.

Document Summary

Chapter Description

Chapter 1: Introduction to Spectroscopy

Chapter 2: Overture Software

Chapter 3: Overture Software Icons and

Menus

Chapter 4: Experiments

Chapter 5: Applications

Appendix A: Sample Experiments

Appendix B: Maintenance

Provides an overview of spectroscopy and spectrometers.

Lists installation procedures for Overture software.

Contains a list of the icons and menu items and their
functions in Overture software.

Provides a variety of experiments to perform using Ocean
Optics spectrometers and Overture software.

Contains applications for Overture software.

Contains some possible experiments for Ocean Optics
spectrometers and Overture software.

Provides suggested maintenance and a table of possible
problems and suggested solutions.

Product-Related Documentation

You can access documentation for Ocean Optics products by visiting our website at

http://www.oceanoptics.com

document from the available drop-down lists. Or, use the
of the web page.

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. Select Technical → Operating Instructions, then choose the appropriate

Search by Model Number field at the bottom

About This Manual

You can also access operating instructions for Ocean Optics products on the Software and Technical
Resources

CD included with the system.

Engineering-level documentation is located on our website at

Technical → Engineering Docs.

Upgrades

Occasionally, you may find that you need Ocean Optics to make a change or an upgrade to your system.
To facilitate these changes, you must first contact Customer Support and obtain a Return Merchandise
Authorization (RMA) number. Please contact Ocean Optics for specific instructions when returning a
product.

vi 000-20000-400-01-201108

Chapter 1

Introduction to Spectroscopy

Spectroscopy in a nutshell

A spectrometer is a device that breaks up light into different colors by spreading out, or dispersing
different wavelengths. Rain does this by refraction
through yellow and then red.

of light, creating a rainbow that goes from violet

This spread of colors is called the visible spectrum. Humans can see light between 380nm (violet) and
780nm (deep red). Other creatures can see different ranges.

You can get the same effect by reflecting light with a CD. The very fine markings on a CD are so small
that they are getting close to the wavelength of light and cause the diffraction of light into a spectrum. The
CD surface is acting as a diffraction grating

000-20000-400-01-201108 1

. In fact it is a reflecting diffraction grating.

Chapter 1: Introduction to Spectroscopy

If you want to find out how a motorcycle works, the best thing to do is take it apart to its individual pieces
and see what it’s made of. The same applies to light. If we can break it up using refraction or diffraction,
we can see what is going on at each wavelength.

Note

Try searching on the web for the words in blue.

Spectroscope views

Below are three spectra as seen through a traditional spectroscope.

This spectrum is of a tungsten filament lamp:

This is spectrum of sunlight. It is a similar continuous spectrum but it contains fine dark lines caused by
absorption of certain wavelengths in the sun and earth atmospheres. These are called Fraunhofer lines

This is an emission spectrum from a hydrogen gas discharge tube. It shows that the hydrogen gas only
emits light at certain wavelengths. Excited hydrogen atoms emit a specific series of narrow spectral lines
called the Balmer series.

.

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Chapter 1: Introduction to Spectroscopy

The CCD array spectrometer

Looking at sunlight through the spectrometer will tell us a lot about how it works. If you have a pocket
spectroscope you can compare the traditional spectroscope view with the Overture software display.

Sunlight enters the spectrometer through a 50 micron-wide slit. That is very narrow; 5/100ths of a
millimeter.

In a conventional spectroscope you will see a spectrum and any absorbance lines will show as dark lines.
These lines correspond to sharp dips in the Overture spectrum graph.

The light passes through an optical geometry of focusing mirrors and a reflection grating. The spectrum
falls on a linear CCD array
array corresponds to one wavelength.

with 250 tiny sensors in a row so that each sensor (often called a pixel) in the

The number of photons
on the graph. The x-axis is scaled to the pixel number, which indicates wavelength.

hitting each pixel is converted to a voltage which is converted into a y-axis value

Optical Limitations

The Ocean Optics Spectrometers for Education can display peaks separated by less than 2nm, depending
on the model. This is the limit of its resolution.

The spectrometer resolution is limited by a number of factors, including:

 Slit width

 Grating specification (lines per mm) and quality

 Number of pixels in the array

 Physical size of the system

This causes an apparent spreading of emission and absorption lines in the Overture display so that they
appear as sharp Gaussian peaks, but this is still remarkably high resolution for a compact instrument.

In chemistry applications this is not a problem as the absorption peaks are usually over a hundred
nanometers wide. In fact you will deliberately “smooth” the spectrum by averaging the array output using
Overture software.

For chemistry applications it is the sensitivity or dynamic range that is more important. This allows the
spectrometer to detect small changes in absorption on the y-axis.

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Chapter 1: Introduction to Spectroscopy

Here is what an emission spectrum looks like. This is from a Hydrogen lamp for observing Balmer lines:

Emission lines look like sharp peaks. It is possible to identify elements from their emission peaks. Notice
that some peaks go beyond the visible range.

4 000-20000-400-01-201108

Chapter 2

Overture Software

Product Overview

Overture is a spectroscopy operating software platform for 32-bit and 64-bit Windows. The following
operating systems are supported:

 Windows XP
 Vista
 Windows 7

This software can control the following Ocean Optics spectrometers:

 ADC1000-USB (including Deep Well)
 HR2000
 HR2000+
 HR4000
 Jaz
 Maya2000
 Maya2000Pro
 MMS-Raman
 NIR256
 NIR512
 NIRQuest
 QE65000
 STS
 Torus
 USB2000
 USB2000-FLG
 USB2000+
 USB4000

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Chapter 2: Overture Software

Overture Installation

Overture can be downloaded from the Ocean Optics Software Downloads site, or retrieved from the CD
that you received with your purchase of an Ocean Optics spectrometer.

Retrieving from a CD

Your Overture software is shipped to you from Ocean Optics on a CD. The software is located either on
the main
separate CD labeled
jacket of the CD containing your SpectraSuite software to complete the installation.

Software and Technical Resources CD, or (in the case of the Windows 64-bit version) on a

Overture Windows 64-bit Version. You will need the password located on the

► Procedure

1. Insert the CD containing your Overture software into your computer.

2. Select the Overture software for your computer’s operating platform via the CD interface. Then
follow the prompts in the installation wizard.

Or,

Browse to the appropriate Overture set-up file for your computer and double-click it to start the
software installation. Set-up files are as follows:

 Windows 32-bit: Overture-windows-x86-1.0.1-installer.exe

 Windows 64-bit: Overture-windows-x64-1.0.1-installer.exe

3. Save the software to the desired location. The default installation directory is

Files\Ocean Optics\Overture

. The installer wizard guides you through the installation process.

Downloading from the Ocean Optics Website

► Procedure

1. Close all other applications running on the computer.

2. Start Internet Explorer.

2. Browse to the Software Downloads page on the Ocean Optics website at

http://www.oceanoptics.com/technical/softwaredownloads.asp.

3. Click on the Overture software appropriate for your Windows operating system.

\Program

4. Save the software to the desired location. The default installation directory is

Files\Ocean Optics\Overture

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. The installer wizard guides you through the installation process.

\Program

Chapter 3

Overture Software Icons and

Menus

Overview

The following table provides a quick guide to the Overture Software icons. See the paragraphs following
the table for information on how to use these icons when taking a measurement.

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Chapter 3: Overture Software Icons and Menus

Icon Function

New Graph

Open Spectrum

Save Spectrum

Copy Data to Clipboard

Store Reference Spectrum

Store Dark Spectrum

Intensity

Overture Software Icons

Absorbance

Transmission

Concentration

Snapshot

Wavelength Range

Zoom In

Zoom Out

Print

Reference Lines

Color

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Chapter 2: Overture Software Icons and Menus

Integration Time

Integration time is the exposure time for each pixel in the array. Each of the pixels is “read” in turn and
the time between readings controls the amount of charge in each CCD sensor. The charge decreases with
every photon that hits the sensor, so if there are not many photons around it takes a long time to reduce
the charge. Too many photons will discharge the sensor completely in a short time.

If the time is too long, the sensors will “saturate” and the spectrum line will go off scale. This does not
harm the sensor, but the data you collect will have no value.

For very dim sources a longer integration time is needed, but the penalty is more noise for less signal. The
default integration time is 100 ms.

The integration time is set in the Integration Time filed in the status bar at the bottom of the screen.

Intensity

Intensity is the default mode.

The y-axis reads Intensity, which is a count of how many photons have hit each pixel in the array during
one integration time. It is a relative measurement.

Intensity mode is ideal for most physics-based applications using just the fiber optic input.

Store Dark Spectrum

Before we can move on to any mathematical comparisons between sample spectra we have to tell the
spectrometer where zero is. To do this, block any light entering the fiber and click the

spectrum

You will not see any change, but the Overture software now has a zero or “dark” reading stored for every
wavelength.

icon.

Store dark

Reference spectrum

Next we have to tell the spectrometer about the source we are comparing to. This is the reference source.
Typically this would be a cuvette containing a colorless solvent, but no dissolved sample.

Set up your reference sample so that the highest point on the intensity y-axis is about 85% of full scale.

Click the store
stored.

Be careful. If you change anything about your reference source now, you must store a new reference. You
can click the icon to update the reference as many times as you like. If you change the integration time
you will need to store a new reference reading.

reference spectrum icon. You will see no change, but your reference spectrum is now

Once you have stored dark and reference spectra, the Transmission and Absorbance modes are enabled.

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