High. Resolution Infrared Spectroscopy

Abstract

Until recently, infrared spectroscopy has been performed with spectrometers utilizing filtered broadband sources and gratings or prisms to spatially spread the energy spectrum of the source. These wavelength measuring spectrometers characteristically have large spectral tuning ranges with resolutions typically limited to 0.1–1 cm^?1: In the far-infrared region where only small amounts of energy are available from broadband sources, two-beam interferometric techniques have been employed with computing techniques to perform Fourier transform spectroscopy. In this technique the entire spectrum to be analyzed is incident upon the detector from the two interfering beams to take advantage of all of the energy available and then computations are made to display the entire spectrum.