Courtesy of Nicolet Inc.

Figure 20. A Typical Interferogram

The accumulation of spectra also increases the sensitivity of the device, which is a useful advantage in combined systems, where the available sample from the chromatograph may often be limited. Furthermore, as a single scan may only take about a second to run, in order to double the sensitivity, the total scanning time would still only require to be increased to four seconds. In general, combined systems involving IR measurements have not been the most successful and, without the introduction of the Fourier transform IR spectrometer, it is doubtful if IR combination instruments would have survived after the introduction of faster and more efficient columns.