Mid-Infrared Energy Deposition Spectroscopy

It is generally assumed that the spectral acquisition speed in photothermal spectroscopy is fundamentally limited by the thermal diffusion process. Here, we demonstrate midinfrared energy deposition (MIRED) spectroscopy that offers both microsecond-scale temporal resolution and submicron spatial resolution. In this approach, the photothermal process is optically probed while the infrared pulses from a quantum cascade laser array are rapidly tuned. Based on Newton's law of heating and cooling, the energy deposition is the first derivative of local temperature rise over time and gives the instantaneous absorption. By employing time-resolved measurement of transient energy deposition, the upper limit for spectrum encoding shifts to the vibrational relaxation level, which occurs on the picosecond scale. This method significantly increases the detection bandwidth while retaining the sensitivity and resolution benefits of photothermal detection.