ICL has brought back the 3M® card, which we manufacture under a license from Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company. Polyethylene IR sample cards provide inexpensive disposable sample subsrates for qualitative analysis. The 2" x 4" cards mount vertically in the universal slide mount in any spectrophotometer. The cards have two clear apertures of 19mm and space is provided to write on the card to identify the date of the analysis, the sample and the name of the analyst. The cards are sold in packages of 10, 25 and 50 and are also available with one sample substrate.

Polyethylene cards exhibit absorbance bands in the 4400 to 400 CM-1 spectral range. Absorbance spectrum of the cards is shown in Fig. 1 below. Real Crystal® IR Sample Cards which do not exhibit any absorbance peaks are also available.

FIGURE 1: Polyethylene sample card absorbance spectrum.