Publication Date

Spring 2018

Advisor(s) - Committee Chair

Dr. Yan Cao (Director), Dr. Bangbo Yan, Dr. Darwin Dahl

Degree Program

Department of Chemistry

Degree Type

Master of Science

Abstract

To discover the potential of IR spectroscopy and explore the details of FTIR instrumentation, a FTIR was built from most basic parts to provide access to every aspect of a IR spectrometer including the hardware and software. The optical system followed the most widely used double-interferometer design. The software control system was developed with LabVIEW to perform data acquisition of the detectors, data processing and controls of the actuators. The FTIR built will be able to provide a full optical IR spectroscopy platform which has a complete control and data acquisition system and can be continuously improved in accuracy and resolution to reach high lab experiment class as the research keep going. The availability of the hardware setup and software source code allows updating of this system for many advanced IR spectroscopy like spatially resolved and time resolved applications.

To achieve in-situ material characterization with multiple measurements, some instruments can be modified and integrated with experiments. This thesis provides a practical and useful example of measuring IR spectra and mass of the sample simultaneously during thermal reactions. This instrument was designed and build with a Fourier transform infrared spectrometer (FTIR) and a thermogravimetric analyzer (TGA). Diffuse reflectance Fourier transform (DRIFT) was equipped to a commercial FTIR to acquire the IR spectra. A micro-balance was taken from a TGA was refitted to this system to measure the sample mass. A series of LabVIEW applications was developed for the FTIR control and communication, TGA communication and temperature control. The system was successfully built and tested with calcium oxalate decomposition experiments. The data showed that the instrument has good accuracy and repeatability of both the IR and mass measurement. The analysis of the calcium oxalate data demonstrated good correlation between the IR, mass and temperature parameters.

Disciplines

Analytical Chemistry | Materials Chemistry

Download

Share

COinS