Optical spectrometer

Abstract

An optical spectrometer (102) comprises an adjustable sampling space (104) having two generally opposing, relatively movable, side-walls (106,108) which are here substantially formed of optically translucent material and between which in use a sample for analysis is charged and an actuator (116) mechanically coupled, here via a worm drive (118), to one or both of the opposing side-walls (108) and operable in response to a command signal applied thereto to effect their relative movement. The spectrometer (102) further comprises an optical position sensor (110,112,114) adapted to detect interference fringes generated by optical energy traversing the distance between the side-walls (106,108) a plurality of times and to generate the command signal in dependence thereof and preferably also adapted to generate an output indexing intensity against an indication of wavelength usable in the spectrometric analysis of a sample material within the sampling space (104).

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.