Bio-Rad Laboratories has announced a feature to improve the interpretation of infrared (IR) and Raman spectra in version 8.3 of its Knowitall software.
The latest Knowitall release highlights an addition to the Analyzeit spectral interpretation applications for IR, Raman and IR polymer compounds.
With this release, users can now improve spectral interpretations by building a knowledge base of functional groups and corresponding bands from their own data to use in conjunction with Knowitall's built-in knowledge base.
'This new feature will ensure that users can obtain the best spectral interpretation possible for unknown samples using IR or Raman spectroscopy,' said Gregory M Banik, general manager, Bio-Rad Informatics.
'It is particularly useful to those in the polymer and other industries where the compounds analysed are proprietary ones whose functional groups may not be included in the commercial Knowitall knowledge bases,' he added.
Analyzeit helps chemists interpret the spectra of chemical compounds.
The researcher begins the spectral interpretation by loading an unknown spectrum and clicking on a peak of interest.
Analyzeit then compares this peak to its knowledge bases of likely functional groups occurring at that peak position.
The researcher can then visually compare the regions of all peaks associated with each proposed functional group to their unknown spectrum and evaluate how well they match.
The user can then recursively build an interpretation profile for that compound by examining additional peaks and tagging the most likely functional group of candidates that best describe the compound.
This method of analysis can be used alone or with other methods of spectral identification such as searching spectral libraries in the Knowitall system.
