Chapter 10: Near-infrared spectroscopic studies of nanostructured materials

The measurement of the chemical and physical properties of nanostructured materials, including e.g. silicate, carbon nanotubes and fullerenes, is time-consuming, requires expensive instrumental equipment and a lot of user experience. Infrared spectroscopy, especially near-infrared spectroscopy (NIR), coupled with multivariate data analysis (MVA) can be used as a non-destructive, fast, reliable and robust technique for the characterization and classification of nanostructured materials. In this contribution the most relevant milestones reached so far in NIR spectroscopic characterization of nanostructured materials are reviewed, summarized and discussed.