Reflectometers for Absolute and Relative Reflectance Measurements in the Mid-IR Region at Vacuum

We demonstrated spectral reflectometers for two types of reflectances, absolute and relative, of diffusely reflecting surfaces in directional-hemispherical geometry. Both are built based on the integrating sphere method with a Fourier-transform infrared spectrometer operating in a vacuum. The third Taylor method is dedicated to the reflectometer for absolute reflectance, by which absolute spectral diffuse reflectance scales of homemade reference plates are realized. With the reflectometer for relative reflectance, we achieved spectral diffuse reflectance scales of various samples including concrete, polystyrene, and salt plates by comparing against the reference standards. We conducted ray-tracing simulations to quantify systematic uncertainties and evaluated the overall standard uncertainty to be 2.18% (k = 1) and 2.99% (k = 1) for the absolute and relative reflectance measurements, respectively.

Automated summary

The study utilized two types of spectral reflectometers to measure absolute and relative reflectances of diffusely reflecting surfaces, achieving this through different methods. By conducting ray-tracing simulations, researchers evaluated the overall standard uncertainty of the experimental data.