CHEM 524 - Spectroscopic Methods in Analytical Chemistry

Meetings: 174 SES, 2-3:30 PM on T & Th
Lecturer: Tim Keiderling - office: 5407B
Questions/Problems - any day after class or by appointment
- best, e-mail: tak@uic.edu, alternate, phone: x6-3156

For Keiderling group research interests see: www.uic.edu/labs/takgroup

This course is a graduate level Analytical Chemistry course on concepts and techniques important to optical spectroscopy (UV-vis-IR) as used in chemistry and with a primary orientation toward analysis. The level and detail will be beyond that taught in the ordinary undergraduate instrumental analysis sequence (eg. Chem 421 at UIC) and will assume familiarity with the content of such a survey course. There will be some overlap with the undergraduate curriculum and some aspects require learning new material by reading on your own. This is NOT a theory of spectroscopy course; that is available in Chem. 543, offered every Spring term in the Physical Chemistry sequence. However it does assume that the student has an introductory exposure to such a theoretical background at the senior undergraduate level, eg. Chem 346-444 at UIC. Such background should enable you to better appreciate what is being measured with the various techniques and to understand some of the language used in explaining the analytical applications. This course in optical spectroscopy techniques is complemented by other Analytical Chemistry lecture courses in separations by Prof. Shippy and in mass spectroscopy by Prof. Hanley, each of which is offered every other year. Depending on who is the next hire in analytical Chemistry, future offerings of this course may be quite different from the 2001 version.

REQUIREMENTS: There will be aperiodic assigned homework and readings to illustrate the lectures and enhance discussion. Active participation in class and completion of homework is expected for those taking the course for credit who wish to get a "good" grade. Auditors are welcome and invited to participate.

EXAMS: There will be a Final exam which will reflect the entire course. There will be an hour exam to gauge progress, probably in March.

PRESENTATION: Each student (or team of two students) will present a "sales pitch" for a currently available commercial instrument. They will detail its components and argue why those components are the best possible (including cost-benefit trade-off) choices for some particular experiments. Presentations will include results of "comparison shopping" to show why the competition is not as good for the particular application. This is the kind of presentation you will be required to make to your supervisors to gain funds for new instrumentation in the "real world".

TEXTBOOK: "Spectrochemical Analysis" James D. Ingle and Stanley R. Crouch, Prentice Hall, 1988. The course was designed around this book, so most of the material in the course will be directly related to the topics in the book. though it is a bit dated, most of the contents are still pretty good. It is available from the bookstore, but is not cheap (sorry!); some used versions may be available from older students. It would be possible to share a text, but it will be very hard to get through the entire course without some sort of regular access to the text. I will put some other useful books on reserve in the Science Library. When lectures are drawn from alternate sources, I will try to give appropriate references. In addition I plan to put lecture notes and hopefully overheads on a Web Site (to be announced, as soon as I learn how!). There may be a shortage of texts; please inform me of your intention to purchase a book especially if the bookstore runs out.

CLASS MEETINGS. There are currently 2 meetings per week scheduled for 1.5 hours each. We will need to occasionally go beyond the time limit so that we can get into some topics at greater depth (as the class chooses), to have some demonstrations, and to make up for some missed classes when the lecturer is forced to be away. Regular attendance is expected for classes.
Demonstrations of relevant equipment or computational techniques can be arranged if students are interested.

TOPICS: (It may prove useful to alter the order and timing of each topic as the class evolves during the semester. Following student suggestions in the past, I will leave some of the details for you to glean from the text and handouts and try to focus on generalities and applications in lecture.)

• Introduction: Methods, Techniques, Terminology in a general sense. Material from Chap. 1 & 2 will be used.
  
• Sources: Conventional (incoherent) sources - Blackbody, discharge, atomic, line and continuous. Lasers (coherent)-IR, Vis, UV--line and tunable--solid state, dye, gas/ion discharge, and time base- pulsed and cw (continuous). -- Chap. 4 as a guide
  
• Optics: Lenses, mirrors, polarizers, modulators, choppers, filters
  Spectrometers--dispersive (prism and grating) wavelength sorters
  Interferometers--Fabrey Perot, Michaelson (Fourier Transform) Chap. 3 covers all these topics with help from optics texts
  
• Sampling: more with individual techniques (below) -- Append E ?
  
• Detectors: IR, Vis, UV--photon and energy--single and multichannel Chap 4 +
  
• Electronics: Focus on generic components of wide-spread use
  
• Signal to noise ratio and detection limits: ought to be interesting but proves difficult to discuss -- Chap 5 & 6
  
• Data analysis--Statistical methods, principle component or factor analysis, neural networks--all depending on the time available
  

Spectroscopic methods (including presentations):

• Atomic Absorption/Emission--Chap 7-11--we do much less than book
  
• Molecular absorption--electronic (UV and vis)--Chap 12-13 and 15 --and excitation/emission, luminescence
  
• Infrared absorption--vibrational--Chap 14
  
• Raman spectra/scattering -- Chap 16-- (mostly visible, with laser excitation and dispersive detection)
  
• Other topics if class has interest (except magnetic resonance)
  
  
  

  ---

- -