3. Classical optical and spectroscopic characterization techniques

3.1 Instrumentation

The optical and spectroscopic set-ups required to characterize luminescent materials rely on more or less sophisticated instrumentation, but the basic elements are often a light source, a spectral analysis system and a signal detection and processing system. Without going into the details of how these different tools work, which would be a subject in its own right, let's just mention the most important ones, describing only what they can achieve.

3.1.1 Light sources

As we...