APPLICATIONS OF INFRARED IMAGING WITH A FOCAL-PLANE ARRAY DETECTOR AND A STEP-SCAN FT-IR SPECTROMETER

A powerful new mid-infrared spectroscopic chemical imaging technique c ombining step-scan Fourier transform (FT) Michelson interferometry wit h indium antimonide (InSb) focal-plane array (FPA) image detection is described. The coupling of an infrared focal-plane array detector to a n interferometer provides an instrumental multiplex/multichannel advan tage. Specifically, the multiple detector elements enable spectra at a ll pixels to be collected simultaneously, while the interferometer all ows all the spectral frequencies to be measured concurrently.