The Interpretation of Infrared Spectra: Published Reference Sources

Abstract

Historically, infrared spectroscopy made its debut as an analytical tool during World War II. At that time it was used for quality control by several major chemical manufacturing companies. The instrumentation, which was essentially home-made, was adapted for the quantitative measurements of components in polymeric and petroleum products. In the 1950s, with the introduction of gas chromatographic instrumentation, infrared spectroscopy gradually fell out of favor as a quantitative tool. As a result, the emphasis switched to qualitative analysis. This was a natural role for infrared spectroscopy because of the significant amount of unique structural and chemical/physical information that is intrinsically available from the spectrum. The resultant increase in the use of infrared spectroscopy, as a qualitative tool, was aided by the influx of new, commercial instrumentation introduced during the 1950s - including lower priced, easy to use instruments for routine analysis. Much of the published work for the next two decades focused on the identification and characterization of materials and the development of correlations between the measured spectrum and molecular structure and chemical functionality.