spectral breadth
Lumencor’s illuminators are designed to support the use of the most common fluorophores used in fluorescence microscopy today. Products come with multiple outputs designed to produce white light or multiple outputs designed to be used independently. SOLA light engine models® require filtering to be done by the end user; filters and mirrors are all external to the light engine. SPECTRA light engine® models contain excitation filters. Only the SPECTRA X light engine® affords the user the opportunity to switch those excitation filters.
The use of Lumencor’s recommended filters and matched dichroics and emission filters will ensure the most power and intensity is delivered to your instrument or microscope and will minimize any bleedthrough of excitation light into the emission bands. The attached PDFs contain lists of excitation bands that are well matched to the common single pass dichroic and emission filters. Custom filters are available upon request. Please speak to your Lumencor sales representative to confirm the best filter prescription for your application and experiments.
Fast switching speed is needed in illuminators designed to support live cell imaging and high throughput analysis. Lumencor’s products satisfy this need with electronic switching and shuttering between color bands and among intensities, on the order of 10’s of microseconds or less. This is in contrast to the 100 ms timing typically required to rotate a filter wheel between single-band pass filters for use with the common arc lamps. The fast timing of Lumencor’s light engines can only be fully exploited with appropriate multi-band dichroics and multi-band emission filters. They eliminate mechanical constraints of timing tied to filter movement on the detection side of the analysis. The recommended polyband mirrors and filters to support the most commonly requested fluorophor combinations are listed in each of these fliers for two of the major filter manufacturers: Semrock and Chroma.