Infrared (IR) Spectroscopy

Eight FACSS award winners at SciX 2026, One LIBS trailblazer. Forty-eight questions. And not one of them is a softball. Award season in spectroscopy usually means polite applause, a plaque, and a photo. We're not completely interested only in the award sessions. The eight scientists honored at SciX 2026 in Sparks, Nevada, along with LIBS researcher Alessandro De Giacomo, are pushing Raman into operating rooms, flying LIBS on drones, reading chemistry off Mars, and tracing toxic metals downwind of industrial sites. Their work makes big claims. In the coming days, Spectroscopy will sit down with eight of these researchers and ask whether those claims hold up. The interviews that follow won't just celebrate. They'll press on the gaps between simulation and experiment, between the lab bench and the clinic, and between a clever paper and an instrument someone will actually buy and use.

Fourier-transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, long the workhorse of molecular fingerprinting, is being reinvented by photothermal detection schemes and quantum cascade laser (QCL) sources that push spatial resolution and analysis speed far beyond classical dispersive and interferometric limits. New instrumentation such as optical photothermal infrared (O-PTIR) microscopy and laser direct infrared (LDIR) chemical imaging is enabling sub-micron, label-free chemical mapping of biological, environmental, and pharmaceutical samples. This article reviews the latest FT-IR-adjacent technologies, recent patents, and research driving the field, featuring perspectives from the scientists and instrument developers advancing the technique.

FT-IR spectroscopy, long treated as a mature bench technique for confirming a carbonyl stretch or fingerprinting a polymer, has quietly become one of chemistry’s most versatile discovery engines: it now infers molecular structure straight from a spectrum without a reference library, resolves chemistry tens of nanometers wide, and screens a fingerstick of blood for disease in minutes. The last five years of published research show FT-IR moving from a confirmatory tool into a predictive, autonomous, and field-ready analytical platform.

A recent roundtable discussion with the SpecAcademy instructors explored why spectroscopy expertise has eroded and how SpecAcademy aims to rebuild it.

The gap between classroom training and industry practice is pushing analysts toward familiar techniques instead of the most appropriate ones.

The launch of SpecAcademy is set to solve some of the current education gaps in analytical spectroscopy. We preview an upcoming roundtable discussion with some of SpecAcademy’s instructors here.

The following articles are the most accessed digital object identifier (DOI) manuscripts for Spectroscopy and LCGC International during the month of August 2026. Ten articles are individually ranked here by DOI page views.

Webinar Date/Time: Thu, Oct 1, 2026 11:00 AM EDT

Jurgen Popp, Thomas Mayerhofer, and colleagues at Leibniz IPHT and Friedrich Schiller University Jena introduce the Personalized Optical Digital Twin (PODT), a Photonics21 contribution to Europe's Virtual Human Twin ecosystem that connects molecular photonics—Raman blood analysis, coherent Raman tissue imaging, and multimodal endomicroscopy—with longitudinal physiology and clinical data. Drawing on the published multicenter INTELLIGENCE trials, the authors argue that technical feasibility and clinical utility must be evaluated separately as the field moves toward Europe's FP10 research agenda.

The 2026 SciX Conference will offer an assortment of short courses during the conference week in Sparks, Nevada. We highlight these courses below.

The Peter Griffiths Award, named for the legendary infrared spectroscopist, recognizes the best paper published annually in Applied Spectroscopy Practica. Its inaugural recipients, Sara Fraser-Miller and coauthors, will be honored at SciX 2026, and the journal is now accepting 2026 submissions for the third award.

In this Q&A, we explore the advanced techniques, methods, and real-world applications of FT-IR spectroscopy.

A proof-of-concept study combines a convolutional neural network feature extractor with the conventional hit quality index (HQI) to improve Raman spectral comparison, reducing spurious similarity and improving discrimination between closely related protein and antibody spectra.

Researchers have developed a new validated attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform infrared (ATR-FTIR) and Raman spectroscopy framework for forensically distinguishing automotive vinyl wraps by manufacturer, color, and finish.

A history of the James L. Waters Symposium at Pittcon, from its 1987 origins and its founder, instrument entrepreneur James Logan Waters, through thirty-six installments of speakers spanning gas chromatography to generative AI.

Peter R. Griffiths, a pioneering figure in Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy who authored or coauthored more than 300 scientific papers and numerous books over five decades, died August 29, 2026, at age 84. This tribute traces his career from Oxford and Digilab through Ohio University and the University of Idaho, his landmark books and the Handbook of Vibrational Spectroscopy, and his many honors, including the 2023 Ellis R. Lippincott Award and 2024 Optica Fellowship.

A recent review article examines how AI-assisted spectroscopic tools are propelling forensic trace evidence analysis forward.

This curated selection of articles highlights recent advancements in microplastics and nanoplastics and soil analysis.

A handheld infrared (IR) scanner paired with an artificial neural network (ANN) can identify human versus animal bone with over 96% accuracy.

Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, a technique built on a scanning mirror invented before the moon landing, is quietly being rebuilt from the ground up. Light combs, photothermal probes, and chip-scale photonics are pushing infrared analysis past resolution and speed limits that stood for six decades.

A forensic case study using FT-IR, portable Raman spectroscopy, and SEM-EDS to differentiate three-layer automotive coatings from a hit-and-run accident, demonstrating that combining complementary spectroscopic and elemental techniques improves the accuracy of paint evidence identification.

Infrared (IR) spectroscopy, paired with statistical modeling, can non-destructively distinguish human, dog, and cat bloodstains on sand and soil, offering a preliminary proof-of-concept for field-deployable forensic screening tools.

In this preview of the upcoming American Chemical Society (ACS) Fall 2026 Meeting, we sat down with Pavithraa “Pavi” Sundararajan, a postdoctoral fellow at NASA Ames Research Center, discusses how spectroscopic techniques have been applied in the study of nitrogen-containing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs).

In this preview of the upcoming American Chemical Society (ACS) Fall 2026 Meeting, we sat down with Pavithraa “Pavi” Sundararajan, a postdoctoral fellow at NASA Ames Research Center, previews her upcoming talk on polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs).

The following articles are the most accessed digital object identifier (DOI) manuscripts for Spectroscopy and LCGC International during the month of July 2026. Nine articles are ranked here by DOI page views; a tenth entry in the July report (135 views) was recorded against the bare journal-level DOI rather than an individual article and is therefore not attributable to a single manuscript.