Two Dimensional Infrared Spectroscope with Time Averaging

By: Brent Leinonen

Advised by: Dr. Aleksander Malinowski and Dr. Luke Haverhals

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An Infrared Spectrometer is an instrument mainly used by chemists to allow the identification of chemical bonds within molecules and some ionic materials.  Many types of chemical bonds absorb unique sets of frequencies of the infrared light.  One can use that knowledge to determine when there is a certain bond (and therefore a certain type of molecule) in the researched material.  The main drawback of standard infrared spectrometers is that the instruments are configured to only allow the interrogation of a relatively small portion of the material (i.e., the average spectroscopy within an relatively narrow region of interest).  Here, we detail the development of an infrared spectrometer that enables much larger two-dimensional areas to be interrogated ‘pixel by pixel’. This allows much more sophisticated analyses of various types of materials to be performed.