DEVELOPMENT OF A FOURIER TRANSFORM FAR INFRARED (FTFIR) SPECTROMETER TO CHARACTERIZE BROADBAND TRANSMISSION PROPERTIES OF COMMON MATERIALS IN THE TERAHERTZ REGION

by Ford, William Paul

With sub-millimeter wave or terahertz devices becoming more readily available, there is interest in developing sensors in this region of the spectra. To support this interest, we have developed a Fourier Transform Far InfraRed (FTFIR) spectrometer to characterize broadband transmission and reflectance coefficients of materials. The spectrometer utilizes a broadband blackbody source, a Michelson interferometer, and silicon bolometer. The path difference in the Michelson is obtained using a linear stage and data acquisition and stage control were both implemented in a Labview programming environment. The details of the experimental setup and experimental results are presented in this thesis. The instrument demonstrated capability to measure the broadband transmission spectra of cloth and cardboard samples and we found that these spectra, which showed transmission < ~0.5 THz and increased in attenuation at higher frequencies, agreed with accepted general trends.