Portable FT-IR Spectrophotometer

At IFAC-CNR laboratories a portable Alpha Bruker Optics FT-IR Spectrophotometer has been available since 2012. It allows to acquire spectra in Total Reflectance mode in a completely non invasive way in the 7500-375 cm-1 range, thus covering the whole MIR and part of the NIR regions with a maximum resolution of 2 cm-1. It can provide information on inorganic and organic materials, such as pigments, dyes, binding media, and fillers that constitute painting without any need of sampling. It has been successfully employed in the study of traditional artworks, such as wall paintings, panel and canvas paintings, and artworks on different supports. In addition, it has been also successfully used on modern and contemporary artworks allowing the identification of many unconventional materials used by contemporary artists. Furthermore, the compact design of the spectrophotometer makes it possible to work in situ and/or unfavorable situations. The spectrophotometer can be used with different plug and play modules for collecting spectra in transmittance and Attenuated Total Reflectance (ATR) modes.