FTIR Tutorial

• The Absorbance spectrum of PS is shown below..

   

  

• Whether you use transmission, or absorbance is up to you, however, each method of display has some advantages:
  
  
• intensities of absorbance bands are quantitative. Therefore absorbance is better for any work where you will measure band intensities.
  
  
• FTIR libraries tend to be displayed in transmission mode(especially old ones), so you may wish to plot your spectra in transmission mode, if you wish to use a library.
  
  
• In general, modern references tend to use absorbance.

To print out your spectrum, press plot on the control panel, click File-->Plot, or press the button on the left.

IMPORTANT! Whenever you've finished with the spectrometer, you MUST put the spectrometer into "shutdown mode". Failure to do this will shorten the lifetime of the instrument. Click "Load Method", then select the method "shutdown.ini", then click "Diagnostics", and then "Init Bench". When this is done, the orange light on the instrument should be flashing very slowly, indicating that you've slowed the moving mirror. Don't forget to remove your sample!

Congratulations! You've reached the end of the course. Now you should take the test, to see how much you've learned. It is available from the link at the top of the page. Here you will also find the evaluation feedback form. Please fill this in, too.

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