A Brief Review of BTEM Spectral Analysis. in Situ and On-Line FTIR, Raman, NMR and DRIFT Studies

Band-target entropy minimization (BTEM) is an algorithm which analyzes very large sets of spectra (1000's of spectra are typical sets), in order to determine the underlying pure component spectra of the consituents present. The BTEM algorithm was first presented in a few 2002 publications, using FTIR data from reactive organometallic and homogeneous catalyzed reactions. Frequently, a dozen or more pure component spectra can be recovered from a reaction, even from trace components. Typical signal-to-noise ratios, for species at the 1 ppm level are 20:1 or better. BTEM has now been used in circa 100 peer-reviewed journal publications (Organometallics, JACS, J Catalysis etc). Since 2002, BTEM has been applied to 1D data (Raman, NMR, DRIFT, UV-VIS, ECD etc) as well as 2D data (COSY and other 2D NMR, excitation flouresence). This contribution will review the various areas where BTEM has made a contribution.