Littrow echelle gratings

Figure 11. Left Littrow configuration for an echelle grating. Right example of the layout of orders (labelled by m) on the detector showing the wavelength ranges covered.

Heitmann et al. [11] designed a very compact double monochromator, consisting of a 300 mm prism pre-monochromator and a 400 mm echelle grating monochromator, both in Littrow mounting, which is shown schematically in Figure 4.3. The prism monochromator selects the part of the spectrum that is of interest, and the echelle monochromator provides the high dispersion of the selected spectral interval, which is better than 2 pm per pixel at 200 nm (see Welz et al. [10]). 

A conventional monochromator (either Ebert, Czerny-Turner, Littrow or Echelle) may be used (see AAS sections for details), but some of the more basic instrumentation uses interference filters. These are optical filters that remove large bands of radiation in a nondispersive way. A dispersion element such as a prism or a grating is therefore not required. Only a relatively narrow band of radiation is allowed to pass to the detector. The disadvantage with such devices is that they are not particularly efficient and hence much of the fluoresced light is lost. An alternative development is the multi-reflectance filter. This is shown diagramatically in Figure 3, and has the... 

FIGURE 3 Schematic representation of the most frequently used grating-based monochromators (A, B, C) and polychromators (D, E, F). A and D are known as Czerny-Turner design. Fastie-Ebert (B) and Littrow (C) have similar designs in that both use a single reflective mirror. A Rowland circle polychromator is depicted in E, and F represents an Echelle spectrograph. 

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