Microspectroscopy, the marriage of spectroscopic chemical identification with microscopic spatial resolution, has advanced from Perkin-Elmer's first commercial infrared microspectrometer in 1953 to today's nanoscale AFM-IR probes, synchrotron-brightness infrared beamlines, and compact hyperspectral tissue imaging devices being developed for AI-assisted cancer detection.

In this “Tutorial Tuesday” clip, Peter Larkin, who is a Manager of Spectroscopy, Thermal Analysis, and Chromatography at Syensqo, highlights how people use the method or technique that they are comfortable with, even if it’s not the best one to use.

The following articles are the most accessed digital object identifier (DOI) manuscripts for Spectroscopy and LCGC International during the month of September 2026. Nine articles are individually ranked here by DOI page views; the third-highest entry (186 views) was recorded against the bare journal-level DOI rather than an individual article and is therefore not attributable to a single manuscript.

SciX 2026, the annual conference presented by the Federation of Analytical Chemistry and Spectroscopy Societies (FACSS), ran October 4–9, 2026, at the Nugget Casino Resort in Sparks, Nevada. The program spanned atomic and molecular spectroscopy, mass spectrometry, chemometrics, and bioanalysis. This report follows the meeting day by day, from Monday's clinical Raman plenaries to Friday's closing talks, drawing on the online program and Spectroscopy coverage of award winners, highlighting efforts to move Raman, SERS, LIBS, and single-particle ICP-MS toward clinical, environmental, and field use.

Marc Porter describes how his group’s surface science work led to SERS-based immunoassays, why reproducibility and pre-analytics decide whether a test reaches the clinic, and the questions he still wants to answer.

The 2026 first edition of Spectroscopy's Chemometrics, Data Processing, Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence Terminology Guide defines the classical chemometric, statistical, machine learning, AI, and process analytical technology (PAT) terms most likely to be encountered by working spectroscopists, analytical chemists, and process engineers.

Does industry need to get more involved in training the next generation of spectroscopists?

In an interview at SciX, Alessandro De Giacomo discusses nanoparticles as signal enhancers and medical tags, a self-calibrating drone LIBS system, open questions in laser–matter interaction, and why students need a strong foundation in fundamentals.