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How to implement NIR spectroscopy in your laboratory workflow

Jan 8, 2024

Article

This article is Part 3 of a series.

Once near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS, or NIR spectroscopy) has been successfully integrated in your analysis workflow, your lab will profit from a fast, accurate, and non-destructive method for routine analysis. But how should you proceed to implement NIR spectroscopy in your laboratory workflow?

In this third installment in our series about NIR spectroscopy, we describe the steps needed to implement a NIR method in your lab, showcased on a real example.

Let’s begin by making a few assumptions:

  1. Your business produces polymeric material. The laboratory has invested in a NIR analyzer for rapid moisture measurements (as an alternative to Karl Fischer titration) and rapid intrinsic viscosity measurements (as an alternative to measurements with a viscometer).
  2. The laboratory has just received their new NIR lab equipment, e.g., a NIRS DS2500 Analyzer.
Workflow for NIR spectroscopy method implementation.
Figure 1. Workflow for NIR spectroscopy method implementation.


Both the determination of moisture and the measurement of intrinsic viscosity are examples of quantitative analysis. NIR spectroscopy can in most cases not be used instantly for this analysis, because a NIR calibration (or prediction model) needs to be created first.

As shown in Figure 1, the steps for implementing NIR spectroscopy include:

  1. Creating a calibration set
  2. Creating and validating prediction models
  3. Routine analysis