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Troubleshooting

As with any experimental procedure, you may occasionally run into a few problems when recording IR spectra. The topics presented below are those commonly encountered by students:

• My spectrum is too weak (poor signal-to-noise ratio)
• My spectrum is too strong (peaks are off scale or have "flat tops")
• My spectrum has "spikes" between 4000 - 3500 and/or 2000 - 1500 cm^-1 (water vapour)
• My spectrum has a (possibly inverted) double peak between 2380 - 2290 cm^-1 (carbon dioxide)
• My spectrum has a slanted baseline
• The baseline of my spectrum does not fall near 100%T
• The salt plates look damaged. Can I still use them?
• I cannot click on the Col Smp icon to start collecting my background and/or spectrum.
• I'm recording the IR spectrum of a sample in solution, and the spectrum looks weird - there are large spikes and the range is very different than the usual 0-100%T

Please notify the Webmaster if you encounter other common problems that you would like to see described here.

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Last modified: Monday, February 28, 2011
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