How is IR spectroscopy interpreted?
1 Answer
Usually with difficulty.
Explanation:
Inorganic professors talk of sporting versus non-sporting techniques of spectroscopy. They refer to the process of duck shooting, where it is considered very unsporting to shoot a sitting bird, and it is only sporting to shoot a bird on the wing.
Non-sporting techniques of spectroscopy include NMR spectroscopy, and (especially) X-ray crystallography. These are direct methods of spectroscopy, which give you a very good idea of molecular structure and connectivity with a good degree of certainty without speculation.
On the other hand, there are the sporting techniques of spectroscopy, whose analysis requires a great deal more supposition. These include UV-vis spectroscopy, and also IR spectroscopy. IR spectroscopy is a superb probe of the
So what I am trying to say, is that IR spectroscopy is a bit of a black box. We can recognize a few absorptions in the spectrum, say those due to