Professional Documents
Culture Documents
two mirrors. One mirror is stationary and will reflect the incident light back toward the beam
splitter. The first beam of light has to travel a total distance of 2L to return back to its original
position. The second beam of light is directed towards a second mirror which is adjustable in
position. This makes the second beam have to travel a total distance of 2L + 2 where is the
displacement of the mirror from L. When the two beams return to the beam splitter they will
interfere with each other based on the optical path difference between the two, producing an
interference pattern which is used to distinguish the individual wavelengths.
Fixed Mirror
Interference pattern
Adjustable Mirror
Beam Splitter
50% transmission
IR Light Source
If only one wavelength of light is considered, constructive interference will occur when the
adjustable mirror is at positions
away from center. Upon these positions the second beam
will have a phase difference equal to
when it returns to the beam splitter, thus there is
complete constructive interference with the first beam. The interference pattern detected for a
single frequency will simply be a cosine wave with maximum intensities at values of
.
For multiple frequencies each wavelength will produce its own sinusoidal interference pattern
based on constructive interference at
. However, since multiple wavelengths are
considered, the position for maximum constructive interference will be different for each
wavelength. This will result in a combination of many different sinusoidal interferences that will
produce an overall additive interference pattern called an interferogram shown in figure 5. This
result is similar to the concept of a wave packet produced from two slightly different
wavelength waves traveling through an optical fiber.
However, since the information regarding frequencies and intensity is compressed into one
interferogram, post-processing must be done to transform this information into a readable plot.
To achieve this a Fourier transform is done on the combined sinusoidal wave to convert it into a
plot of intensity as a function of wavelength. The interferogram is really a function of time
because the optical path difference for a continuous scan is related to time by
where
is the velocity of the moving mirror. Therefore from the interferogram a function
can be
produced that gives the times when the signal is non-zero. The Fourier transform shown in
Single Frequency
c)
Multiple Frequencies
b) Two Frequencies
(1)
To gain any useful information about the sample, the combined beam which contains all
wavelengths from the IR source is transmitted through the sample. Any absorption of IR
frequencies within the sample will be identified by the difference between the measured signal
after the sample and signal without the sample. Since FTIR only measures one signal per test, a
blank run must be run without the sample in order to receive a baseline value. In addition, the
photodetector compares the measured signal to the signal of a HeNe laser in the system. The
purpose of the HeNe laser is to calibrate the device so that it can assign the correct frequencies
to its measured signal.
FTIR can use different types of transducers for measuring light intensity. The two most common
categories of detectors are photon detectors and thermal detectors. The different types of
photon detectors include photovoltaic, photoconductive, and photoelectromagnetic which all
utilize the production of electron-hole pairs in a semiconductor material. Photovoltaics will
produce an electric signal proportional to input intensity. Photoconductive sensors will change
their resistance based on the intensity of light received. Photoelectromagnetic sensors take
advantage of the Hall Effect in a semiconductor. The semiconducting materials used for
photodetectors depends on the bandgap energy of the material and the range of wavelengths
needed to be collected. In addition, many semiconducting photodetectors require
thermoelectric cooling or liquid nitrogen cooling to remain functional due to the high
absorption of light. On the other hand, thermal detection devices use pyroelectric materials
such as LiTaO3. Although semiconducting photodetectors are more sensitive, they are more
Figure 6. Setup of FTIR system.
limited to the range of frequencies they can measure because of energy cut offs due to their
band gaps shown in figure 7.
References
[1] K. Zaghib, A. A. Salah, N. Ravet, A. Mauger, F. Gendron and C. M. Julien, "Structural, magnetic and
electrochemical properties of lithium iron orthosilicate," Journal of Power Sources, vol. 160, pp.
1381-1386, 206.
[2] P. Zhang, C. H. Hu, S. Q. Wu, Z. Z. Zhu and Y. Yang, "Structural properties and energetics of
Li2FeSiO4 polymorphs and their delithiated products from first-principles," Physical Chemistry
Chemical Physics, no. 14, pp. 7346-7351, 2012.
[3] M. Devaraju, T. Tomai and I. Honma, "Supercritical hydrothermal synthesis of rod like Li2FeSiO4
particles for cathode application in lithium ion batteries," Electrochimica Acta, vol. 109, pp. 75-81,
2013.
[4] S. Singh and S. Mitra, "Improved electrochemical activity of nanostructured Li2FeSiO4/MWCNTs
composite cathode," Electrochimica Acta, vol. 123, pp. 378-386, 2014.
[5] M. Karakassides, D. Gournis and D. Petridis, "An infrared reflectance study of Si-O vibrations in
thermally treated alkali-saturated montmorillonites," Clay Minerals, vol. 34, p. 429, 1999.
[6] M. Ganesan, "Li1-xSm1+xSiO4 as solid electrolyte for high temperature solid-state lithium
batteries," Ionics, vol. 13, p. 379, 2007.
[7] C. Eames, A. R. Armstrong, P. G. Bruce and M. S. Islam, "Insights into changes in voltage and
structure of Li2FeSiO4 polymorphs for lithium-ion batteries," Chemistry of Materials, vol. 24, no. 11,
pp. 2155-2161, 2012.
[8] Thermo Nicolet Corporation, "Introduction to Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy," 2001.
[9] P. A. Tanner, "IR instrumentation," University of Trento.
[10] Thermo Nicolet Corporation, "FT-IR vs. Dispersive Infrared," 2002.