Transformer Models in Vibrational Spectroscopy: A Review

Transformer models have attracted increasing interest in vibrational spectroscopy because of their ability to capture long-range dependencies in spectral data. These models have been applied to analytical tasks including spectral preprocessing, classification, quantitative analysis, multimodal data fusion, and spectra-to-structure prediction. Their flexible architectures support applications in Raman, infrared (IR), near-infrared (NIR), and surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS), with examples across chemistry, biology, and materials science. Transformer-based models also offer opportunities to integrate chemical, physical, and biological information in spectral analysis and support interdisciplinary research involving chemometrics, deep learning, and experimental spectroscopy. In this review, we elucidate the fundamental principles of Transformer models and their wide-ranging applications in vibrational spectroscopy, spanning from baseline correction and deconvolution to molecular identification, disease diagnosis, food authentication, and quantitative property prediction. Finally, as Transformer models may not be suitable for every analytical task or consistently outperform simpler approaches, we discuss current challenges and future trends in Transformer models in vibrational spectroscopy and related analytical sciences.