Qualitative spectral measurement characteristics of an ultraviolet-visible Fourier transform spectrometer

Abstract

The qualitative spectral performance of a Fourier transform spectrometer developed primarily for atomic emission spectrochemical measurements is discussed and presented. The system is capable of measurements in the ultraviolet, visible and near-infrared spectral regions. In the ultraviolet region the spectrometer has an absolute wavelength accuracy of 1 pm and a wavelength precision approaching 0.1 pm. Resolution and line shape considerations are presented in detail The demonstrated spectral bandwidth is 0.63 cm −1 which corresponds to 2.5 pm at 200 nm and 5.7 pm at 350 nm. The aliasing aspects of FTS in the ultraviolet and visible spectral region are presented and the ability to de-alias a spectrum in order to have an unambiguous spectral axis is illustrated. The potential existence of spurious spectral lines in FTS is also briefly considered. This article is an electronic publication in Spectrochimica Acta Electronica (SAE), the electronic section of Spectrochimica Acta B (SAB) and several original data sets are provided on computer disks accompanying this publication. With the use of a program called SpectroPlot, also included on the disks, a first-hand assessment of the data acquired by the FTS is possible. The program SpectroPlot is the subject of a separate publication also presented in Spectrochimica Acta Electronica.