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 We just can't emphasize enough how easy the EasyLife™ TCSPC is to perform fluorescence lifetime experiments. There is a power button to turn on the instrument, and there is dial to adjust the stirring rate of the optional micro-stirrer for the cuvette. Everything else is controlled through the software. It is just that easy!
Pulsed LED Light Sources
 OBB engineers have developed a broad range of simple, inexpensive, nanosecond pulsed light emitting diodes (LED's) and Laser Diodes (LD's) to be used as excitation sources exclusively for the EasyLife™ TCSPC. They operate at a very high repetition rate of 100,000 pulses per second which is essential for TCSPC detection. These small but robust light sources are available in a broad range of wavelengths, from UV to NIR. They have excellent pulse to pulse, and long term, stability in their intensity as well as their temporal pulse profiles as is evidenced by the high quality of data the system produces. Switching from one LED to another requires no alignment, and takes only a few seconds. You could not possibly work with any simpler, maintenance-free, light source for fluorescence lifetime research.
Pulsed LED Advantages
The EasyLife™ pulsed LEDs have certain distinct advantages over more conventional light sources, such as nanosecond flash lamps and tunable lasers. These advantages are:
- Inexpensive
- Durable
- Require no maintenance
- Very stable pulse sources
- Very Fast (100,000 Hz)
- Wavelengths from UV to NIR (currently 265–670 nm)
- Small size
- Easily interchangeable (snap in-snap out)
Impressive Pulse Stability
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6 Hours Repeat Acquisition |
Repeat After 4 Days |
Click on images to enlarge. |
Available LEDs
Below is a list of the current selections for LED's and LD's, but this list is growing constantly and we can build an LED for most any wavelength you might need if it is not on this list. Do not worry about selecting a number of LED's for your system. Switching from one LED to the other requires no alignment and is as easy as snap off and snap on. It just doesn't get any easier than that.
LED Sources: |
Central Wavelength |
EL 265 |
excitation LED: 266 +\- 10 nm |
EL 278 |
excitation LED: 280 +\- 10 nm |
EL 295 |
excitation LED: 297 +\- 10 nm |
EL 310 |
excitation LED: 310 +\- 10 nm |
EL 340 |
excitation LED: 340 +\- 10 nm |
EL 366 |
excitation LED: 368 +\- 10 nm |
EL 375 |
excitation LED: 375 +\- 10 nm |
EL 405 |
excitation LED: 403 +\- 10 nm |
EL 410 |
excitation LED: 407 +\- 10 nm |
EL 435 |
excitation LED: 432 +\- 10 nm |
EL 445 |
excitation LED: 444 +\- 10 nm |
EL 450 |
excitation LED: 456 +\- 10 nm |
EL 490 |
excitation LED: 486 +\- 10 nm |
EL 505 |
excitation LED: 510 +\- 10 nm |
EL 525 |
excitation LED: 518 +\- 10 nm |
EL 570 |
excitation LED: 572 +\- 10 nm |
LD 630 |
excitation laser diode: 633 +\- 10 nm |
LD 650 |
excitation laser diode: 649 +\- 10 nm |
LD 670 |
excitation laser diode: 667 +\- 10 nm |
Other LED's and laser diodes are available on request. |
Sample Compartment
The EasyLife™ sample compartment can be configured with a variety of options including the following.
- micro-stirrer
- bandpass and longpass filters
- neutral density filters
- cold finger dewar
TCSPC Detection
The EasyLife™ TCSPC is a time-domain fluorescence lifetime system. It collects a decay curve, allowing the user to fit the curve with comprehensive analysis software that provides many statistical tools to assess goodness of fit. The particular time-domain detection technique used in the EasyLife™ TCSPC is called the Time Correlated Single Photon Counting technique and it was originally developed in the early 1970's. The inherent digital nature of the technique has ensured that it remains a powerful and versatile fluorescence lifetime technique even after forty years. What has dramatically changed with TCSPC detection over the years is the shrinking of all of the TCSPC detection electronics into a single PC card. You no longer need to be an expert to control and tweak a variety of electronic devices like a time to amplitude converter (TAC), amplifiers, a constant fraction discriminators and more. Everything is in the computer and the EasyLife™ TCSPC software takes care of everything else. A technique that is very similar to TCSPC is the Stroboscopic technique which is unique to the EasyLife™ X. For more information on the EasyLife™ X.
The EasyLife™ TCSPC uses a very stable and well established detection system. For more information on the TCSPC technique and how it compares with other lifetime techniques refer to the Technical Note entitled Time Resolved Fluorescence Techniques. TCSPC is used in thousands of labs around the world and there are tens of thousands of publications.
Enhanced sensitivity and lower lifetime limit
One inherent benefit of the TCSPC detection technique is the ability to measure shorter lifetimes than is possible with the EasyLife™ X using the stroboscopic detection technique. With the EasyLife™ TCSPC you can take advantage of the newest picosecond laser diodes and detect shorter fluorescence lifetimes and also lower concentrations. Some of these newest picosecond laser diodes are a little expensive, but when used with our TCSPC detection the EasyLife™ becomes a very powerful research tool.
TCSPC only acquires evenly spaced data points
All TCSPC systems can only collect data in a linear time scale. However the EasyLife™ X system has a patented Stroboscopic detection technique, that provides the unique benefit of being able to collect data in a non-linear time scale. It is worth noting here that if you don't need the intrinsic benefits of TCSPC detection then the EasyLife™ X might be worth taking another look at. One of the unique benefits of the patented Stroboscopic detection technique in the EasyLife™ X is that the user can choose to collect decay curves in a logarithmic (or arithmetic) time scale. Collecting data in a logarithmic time scale can be extremely useful for samples that have both very short and very long fluorescence lifetimes. For the short lived components you need to collect a lot of data points in order to get a good fit for those lifetimes, but for the very long lifetimes you don't want to collect data at the same time resolution because it takes much longer and provides no benefit in fitting the decay curve. All TCSPC systems are necessarily forced to collect data in a linear time scale, so in the case of this complex sample they necessarily must collect many more data points across the full acquisition time window in order to have enough data points to resolve the short lifetime components. The EasyLife™ X has the option to collect data in a logarithmic time scale. The short lived components can be easily resolved because there are many more data points at the beginning of the time scale and then the time interval spaces out further providing enough data for good resolution of the long lived components. For these experiments, the EasyLife™ X can acquire the entire decay curve in minutes, where a TCSPC system might take hours. In this way the Stroboscopic technique employed with the EasyLife™ X can collect excellent data for complex decay phenomena much faster than is possible with the TCSPC technique. For more information refer to the EasyLife™ X.
TCSPC cannot acquire Lifetime Kinetics
If you are interested in studying Lifetime Kinetics, where you would track changes in the fluorescence lifetime of a sample as a function of time, there is only one system available that can provide this capability and that is the EasyLife™ X. TCSPC systems cannot perform this measurement. The EasyLife™ X is the only commercial system available (at any price!) that measures Lifetime Kinetics. If you are familiar with using a fluorometer for time-based kinetics you are familiar with collecting the steady state intensity as a function of time to monitor kinetics and reactions. The EasyLife™ X can acquire data in a similar way except that instead of the intensity changing with time the EasyLife™ X acquires the measured lifetime as a function of time. The time duration of this measurement can be from a few seconds to many hours. Without concern for possibly intensity fluctuations in your sample, this acquisition protocol lets you actually see when the lifetime changes. We believe this unique capability, will become an essential tool for a wide variety of emerging applications. So if you don't need the intrinsic benefits of TCSPC detection then the unique EasyLife™ X might be worth taking another look at.
EasyLife™ TCSPC System
The entire EasyLife™ TCSPC takes up about one cubic foot of lab space!
When our proprietary TCSPC LED light sources are combined with our TCSPC detection system, you are able to reap the benefits of the ultimate sensitivity and very short temporal resolution. The result is a powerful and versatile lifetime instrument, capable of handling complex multi-exponential decays with an underlying broad range of lifetimes. Did we mention that the EasyLife™ TCSPC is the easiest TCSPC system available to do fluorescence lifetime experiments?
For more information on the EasyLife™ TCSPC visit the EasyLife™ TCSPC Software page. |
