126 Agilent 1260 Infinity DAD and MWD User Manual
6 How to optimize the Detector
Optimizing for Sensitivity, Selectivity, Linearity and Dispersion
Slit Width
The detector has a variable slit at the entrance of the spectrograph. This is an
effective tool to adapt the detector to changing demand of different analytical
problems.
A narrow slit provides spectral resolution for analytes with very fine
structures in the absorbance spectrum. An example of such a spectrum is
benzene. The five main absorbance bands (fingers) are only 2.5 nm wide and
just 6 nm apart from each other.
Figure 56 Benzene at 1, 4 and 16 nm slit width (principle)
A wide slit uses more of the light shining through the flow cell. This gives
lower baseline noise as shown in Figure 57 on page 127.
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