Intensity offset and correction of solid spectral library samples measured behind glass

Accurate and calibrated diffuse reflectance spectra libraries of solids are becoming more important for hyperspectral and multispectral remote sensing exploitation. Many solids are in the form of powders or granules and in order to measure their diffuse reflectance spectra in the laboratory, it is often necessary to place the samples behind a transparent medium such as glass or quartz for the ultraviolet (UV), visible or near-infrared spectral regions to prevent their unwanted dispersal into the instrument or laboratory environment. Using both experimental and theoretical methods we have found that for the case of fused quartz this leads to an intensity offset in the reflectance values. Although expected dispersive effects were observed for the fused quartz window in the UV, the measured hemispherical reflectance values are predominantly vertically shifted by the reflectance from the air-quartz and sample-quartz interfaces with intensity dependent offsets leading to measured values up to ∼6% too high for a 2% reflectance surface, ∼3.8% too high for 10% reflecting materials, approximately correct (to within experimental error) for 40% to 60% diffuse reflecting surfaces, and ∼2% too low for 99% reflecting Spectralon surfaces. For the diffuse reflectance case, the measured values are uniformly too low due to the glass, with differences nearly 6% too high for reflectance values approaching 99%. The deviations arise from the added reflections from the quartz surfaces as verified by theory, modeling and experiment. Empirical correction factors were implemented into post-processing software to redress the artifact for hemispherical and diffuse reflectance data across the 300 nm to 2300 nm range.