Method for determining contamination of material using mid-ir spectroscopy

A method of determining contamination on a material having suspected contamination, comprising:

• irradiating said material having suspected contamination with infrared energy over a spectrum of wavelengths between about 400 and about 4000 wavenumbers (cm−1);
• detecting said infrared energy reflected from said material having suspected contamination over said spectrum of wavelengths;
• performing multivariate analysis on the spectrum of said reflected infrared energy;
• comparing results of said multivariate analysis with a predetermined calibration of infrared energy spectra comprising said spectrum of wavelengths collected from at least one reference material;
• and,
• determining presence or absence of contamination on said material having suspected contamination based on said predetermined calibration.

A method of determining contamination on a material coating having suspected contamination on a substrate, comprising:

• irradiating said material coating having suspected contamination with infrared energy over a spectrum of wavelengths between about 650 and about 4000 wavenumbers (cm−1);
• detecting said infrared energy reflected from said material coating having suspected contamination over said spectrum of wavelengths;
• performing multivariate analysis on the spectrum of said reflected infrared energy;
• comparing results of said multivariate analysis with a predetermined calibration of infrared energy spectra comprising said spectrum of wavelengths collected from at least one reference material coating;
• and,
• determining presence or absence of contamination on said material coating having suspected contamination based on said predetermined calibration using a hand-held IR spectrometer.