Instrumental Methods for the Analysis of Materials and of Surfaces

The course will be mainly devoted to delving into the application of some analytical instrumental methods for the characterisation of both inorganic and organic materials. In particular, some advanced approaches of Raman, FTIR, electronic and fluorescence spectroscopies will be debated.
One of the main focuses of this section will be the micro-destructiveness/non-destructiveness - as well as the possible portability and the in-situ application of the different techniques. This especially applies to those cases in which the ability of performing the analyses on samples in their own usual place is a distinctive feature.
Also, some uncommon hyphenated techniques in which spectrometers are used as detectors, such as GC-FTIR or HPLC-FTIR, will be presented; with this regard, especially advantages, disadvantages and achievements of using those methods will be discussed and compared with the more usual hyphenated GC-MS and HPLC-MS techniques.
With regard to elemental analysis, XRF and micro-XRF spectroscopies and their use in materials' qualitative and quantitative characterisation will be addressed.
Finally, an overview that could properly represent the suitability of scanning electron microscopy to both material and surface analysis, especially if coupled with different detectors and probes (backscattered and secondary electrons, EDX, Auger electrons) will be presented.
In the scope of the course, for each topic, several pieces of original research and case studies will be shown as well.