Infrared (IR) Spectroscopy

Infrared (IR) spectroscopy instruments monitor the interaction of a substance with light from the infrared part of the electromagnetic radiation spectrum. Units that are simply considered an IR spectrometer (not FT-IR) use a technique sometimes called dispersive IR where the unit will measure the absorptions of one monochromatic IR light at a time over a defined section of the infrared spectrum and then sum up those individual absorption levels to draw the spectrum. FT-IR techniques instead make use of a summed absorption of multi-chromatic light (rather than one monochromatic light at a time) and then use Fourier transforms on the distribution to make a spectrum.