What about using a continuous laser source from an equipment-rental supplier? Is that an option?

Dear Muhammad,

You can use LEDs to cover a wide range of spectrum. LED light sources are very cheap. It costs a few penny to buy. You can find a power source to drive all different colors. Even you could use a battery to lit up a LED easily. We very often use LEDs for charaterising a photodector. It is very handy.

Hope it helps.

Xuhua

What is the maximum pulse repetition frequency (PRF) of your pulsed laser? I am thinking if you can keep the PRF at the highest setting and take some IV readings. Would it approximate what you are looking for? To tell if you are reaching saturation try a few PRFs and get IV curves.

With a pulsed laser that has that wavelength range, it is likely that the pulses are very high intensity and only picoseconds duration. That would not be suitable for characterizing your detector for basic performance, saturation and short pulse duration will be a problem. If you are specifically investigating time related phenomena, laser diodes used in pulse mode are more versatile, you can change the pulse duration and rise time.

You need to have a CW light source that can select or scan different wavelengths, and measure photoresponse at discrete wavelengths . The spectrometer may be able to operate as a wavelength filter with input from CW white light source, like a halogen and/or deuterium lamp, directing the output on your detector. It depends on what type of spectrometer you have.

I agree with Xuhua Wang, that LEDs can be a very good cheap simple source for basic tests, but you will need many of them to cover the full wavelength range. You could make a small circuit board with a cluster of surface mount LEDs that cover the wavelengths of most interest, and you need to take measures to insure somewhat uniform spatial illumination on your detector. An integrating sphere would be a good choice. For cheap test with less accuracy, Opal glass filter would diffuse the beam. You could also install a second reference detector in the integrating sphere to provide calibrated input monitor (make your own power meter). Integrating spheres can be expensive, but it is possible to make your own. For more advanced pulse testing, the same sphere can be used to couple the pulsed laser with an attenuator. LEDs could also be coupled through the spectrometer and integrating sphere, instead of halogen source.

Hi Muhammad,

You need to have a CW laser source in order to measure I-V characteristics of your sample since your data acquisition time is going to be long during such I-V measurement. No I-V setup in this universe can have a sampling rate that matches with the Pulsed laser which is in ps time scale.