Development of a Polymer Spectral Database for Advanced Chemometric Analysis

The use of chemometric techniques with spectral data for sorting plastics to improve recycling rates have gained more attention in recent years. However, insufficient representation of polymer spectra in spectral databases has been one of the barriers to the further development of these techniques. This work aims to develop a polymer spectra dataset that builds upon existing spectral databases on two fronts. Firstly, the data collected includes Laser-induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) data in addition to more commonly available Infrared (IR) and Raman data. Secondly, the dataset includes unaged and weathered conditions of the same sample. In total, the dataset includes 732 spectra, with the LIBS, IR and Raman spectra of 122 unique samples, both before and after accelerated weathering. The data collected were qualitatively analyzed and visualized. Further work will explore the effect of using hybrid spectroscopic methods on chemometrics analysis results.