New Imaging ATR Accessory for Fast and Reliable FT-IR Chemical Imaging Analyses

Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc recently announced the launch of a new imaging attenuated total reflectance (ATR) accessory offering enhanced spatial resolution and high speed data acquisition capabilities for Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) chemical imaging applications. The Thermo Scientific imaging ATR accessory has been designed to
seamlessly and effortlessly integrate with the Thermo Scientific range of FT-IR microscopes to enable efficient, fast and reliable chemical imaging of challenging samples. This is of particular benefit to manufacturers of composite structures, paper products, pharmaceutical dosage forms, biological tissues, polymer films and coatings. ATR is a popular sampling technique for infrared spectroscopy allowing direct contact sampling of solids and liquids without further preparation. When coupled with an FT-IR microscope, ATR provides a unique capability for exploring the microscopic structure of heterogeneous samples. Single point ATR mapping, while more flexible in terms of total image size and dimensions, requires many separate contact points to build up the imaging data set. The Thermo Scientific imaging ATR accessory provides a more rapid method because it requires the sample to be compressed only once against an extended area of contact. Data collection may then proceed at the same speed as normal transmission or external reflectance experiments. The new imaging ATR accessory greatly simplifies the task of obtaining high quality infrared spectra in cases of samples that are difficult to prepare for transmission analysis. Observable features in specimens, such as defects, particles, fibers or inks, may be effectively analysed with spatial resolution improved by a factor of four relative to transmission measurements. The accessory quickly snaps into the sample holder feature of Thermo Scientific Nicolet iN10, Nicolet iN10 MX and Nicolet Continuμm microscopes in a matter of seconds without the need of tools. All standard microscope optics remain available, thus avoiding any concerns of alignment or down time when switching between sampling modes. Transmission, external reflection, micro-ATR and imaging-ATR capabilities are all immediately available to address the requirements of any FT-IR microscopy application.