NIR Spectrometers: More Options, Better Performance

Download Guide to Modular NIR Spectrometers

Here are a few considerations to keep in mind when using a near-infrared spectrometer. NIR spectroscopy is a versatile and valuable technique for a wide range of applications.

• NIR wavelength range. At Ocean Insight, our NIR spectrometers typically start at 900 nm and extend to 2500 nm. Most folks consider the start of NIR wavelengths as closer to 800 nm, or about where visible wavelengths cut off. If you’re more familiar with wavenumbers, the range is closer to 4000 cm^-1 to 14000 cm^-1.
  
  
• NIR advantages. What's one of the main reasons to use NIR spectroscopy? Because there’s information about your sample in the NIR that you can’t see in the Visible range. Another big advantage is the depth of penetration that you have into the sample. If you're trying to probe tens of microns into a surface – inside an apple, for example -- or into the structure of a compound or material, NIR is a great technique.
  
  
• Sample preparation. Fortunately, there’s not a lot of sample preparation necessary with NIR spectroscopy. You can use our NIR spectrometers with cuvette holders, flow cells and dip probes for absorbance, or reflectance probes and optical stages for diffuse reflection measurements.
  
  
• NIR applications. Our customers have had success using NIR spectroscopy for chemical identification, plastics identification, soil classification and food and vegetation analysis. With food applications, being able to measure below the surface of that apple skin, for example, can reveal blemishes or decay. Also, NIR can be a useful tool for industrial applications where you're looking at dissolved chemicals in aqueous solutions or even in solvents. Many chemicals have very good, strong absorbance signatures in the NIR, making it relatively simple to calculate concentrations.
  
  
• More NIR applications. Biological samples including human skin and blood lend themselves well to NIR analysis. For example, because of the increased penetration depth of NIR signals, and because you get a nice isosbestic point with hemoglobin, the NIR is a great region for oximetry. Also, NIR enables in situ measurements in drug discovery and other processes. For example, NIR allows you to make measurements where you're able to interface with a solution without interfering with it. 
  
  
• NIR Measurement Tips. With reflection, holding your sample and reference in a very precise and repeatable fashion is critical to making accurate measurements, and is good practice in any sort of reflectance spectroscopy. In addition, you want to get as much light into the detector as possible, to ensure good SNR and mitigate the noise inherent to the detector. We developed the NIRQuest+ spectrometer to help address that issue, with an optical design that achieves lower detection limits and higher throughput.
  
  
• Bundle Up. We offer pre-packaged setups for NIR spectroscopy – spectrometer, light source, sampling accessories and more -- that make selecting a system simpler and more convenient. Or peruse these ready-to-go measurement packages as a starting place to configure an NIR setup appropriate for your application.

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