Determination of the composition of paints and coatings is important in many fields – materials science, art history, forensic science, etc. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR spectroscopy) is a well-known method for the analysis of paints and coatings. However, the vast majority of work that has been carried out has been about qualitative analysis (i.e. just determinining what are the main components). Quantitative analysis has not been widespread, largely because of the very complex composition of most paints and coatings.

The master’s thesis of Pippa Hayes from the AMS programme has made an important conytribution to quantitative determination of composition of paints and coatings by FT-IR using the ATR (attenuated total reflectance) sampling. Her work demonstrates, using a wide selection of objects ranging from painting media to industrial coatings, that such quantitative analysis by FT-IR is feasible and she has carried out measurement uncertainty estimation of the results in order to assess their accuracy. As a proof of the quality of the work it has now been published in Spectrochimica Acta Part A 2014, 133, 207–213.