A spectrophotometer with an LED as the light source for uric acid detection is proposed in this work. The mechanism of uric acid detection is based on energy absorbed by sodium urate, which is a chemical product of uric acid and sodium hydroxide solution. For the performance validation, comparison between the spectrophotometer with an LED and halogen lamp is carried out. Measurement results suggest that the spectrophotometer system with LED light has better sensitivity than that with halogen light. At a 460 nm wavelength, the sensitivity for the spectrophotometer with an LED is 0.0046 dL/mg, which is 73% higher than that with halogen light that records 0.0012 dL/mg. This enhanced sensitivity is attributed to the higher luminous efficacy of the LED light beam. As a result, a larger amount of flux interacts with the sample, leading to the sensitivity enhancement. The spectrophotometer with an LED is also applied for the detection of uric acid in a real human urine sample. Based on the experimental data at a 460 nm wavelength, the method manages to achieve the sensitivity of 0.0016 dL/mg, accuracy of 96.01%, limit of detection of 4.79 mg/dL, and limit of quantification of 14.52 mg/dL. These findings show that the use of LED as the input light source is promising for the spectrophotometer.

A double-pass grating imaging spectrometer is proposed and demonstrated. The traditional entrance slit is replaced by a middle reflective slit, which is used as a spectral filter rather than a spatial filter. The light from the scene passes through the same dispersive grating twice. The full image of the scene can be obtained with a snapshot. Therefore, the stripe noise and image distortion caused by image mosaicking can be eliminated. Besides, the target is easier to be captured and focused, just like using a camera. This method can be used to obtain clearer spectral images of the scene conveniently and quickly.

This Letter proposes a snapshot imaging spectrometer, which obtains the spectral information and spatial information in one “shot”. The device proposed can achieve the data cube size of 21×29×40 in the waveband of 400–800 nm. The core element of this system is the microlens array, which contains 60×60 microlenses in a square arrangement, each microlens has an aperture of 125 μm×125 μm, and the F number is 15. The microlens array is mounted in a rotation mount, which provides 360° of rotation around the optical axis to maximize the spectral resolution. The final resolution of the system is about 10 nm.

To measure the global atmospheric three-dimensional distribution and change of temperature and humidity is one of the key areas in atmospheric remote sensing detection; it is also a new research and development direction in the field of meteorological satellite application. As a main element of China second generation of geostationary meteorological satellite Fengyun 4 (FY-4), which was launched on Dec. 11, 2016, the Geostationary Interferometric Infrared Sounder (GIIRS) is the first interferometric infrared sounder working on geostationary orbit internationally. It is used for vertical atmospheric sounding and gains atmospheric temperature, humidity, and disturbances. The combination of Fourier transform spectrometer technology and infrared detectors makes GIIRS have high spectral resolution and large coverage over spatial areas. With this kind of instrument, meteorological satellites can improve the capabilities for severe weather event monitoring and numerical weather prediction. Here a concise review of the GIIRS development project, including its history, missions and functions, technical design, key technologies, system integration, calibration and in-orbit operation status, etc., is presented.