Reflectance FT-IR spectroscopy as a viable option for textile fiber identification

In this study, the reflectance-FT-IR (r-FT-IR) spectroscopy is demonstrated to be a suitable option for non-invasive identification of textile fibers. A collection of known textile fibers, 61 single-component textiles from 16 different types, were analyzed, resulting in more than 4000 individual spectra. The r-FT-IR method was compared with ATR-FT-IR spectroscopy using two instrumental approaches: FT-IR-microspectrometer with ATR mode (mATR-FT-IR) and ATR-FT-IR spectrometer (ATR-FT-IR). Advantages and drawbacks of these methods were discussed. Principal component based discriminant analysis and random forest classification methods were created for the identification of textile fibers in case-study samples. It was concluded that in general, the performance of r-FT-IR is comparable with ATR-FT-IR. In particular, r-FT-IR is more successful than ATR-FT-IR in differentiating between the amide-based fibers wool, silk and polyamide. As an additional result of this work, a collection of r-FT-IR spectra of different textile fibers was compiled and made available for the scientific community.