ANALYTICAL SPECTROSCOPY WITH MID INFRARED TRANSMITTING OPTICAL FIBERS

Three types of materials are being actively investigated for i.r. transmitting optical fibers: heavy metal fluoride glasses, chalcogenide glasses and crystalline silver halides. Each material offers its own set of opportunities and problems and, therefore, will be considered separately. In addition, work is proceeding on new fiber materials, both glass sand crystalline, as well as on hollow waveguides. These materials have yet to have a significant impact on analytical spectroscopy and will not be considered further here. However, they will become important in future, particularly sapphire which combines robustness with transmission in the hydrogen stretching region of the i.r. This review provides in-depth coverage of the use of these fibers for analytical spectroscopy.