The laboratory of analytical chemistry and electrochemistry, directed by Prof.Bernard Gilbert, is part of the Department of Chemistry in the Faculty of Sciences. It operates seven main instruments, four of which use Raman spectrometry and three of which use infrared microscopes. All these instruments are completely computerized, and one of them was fabricated in the laboratory itself. According to Bernard Gilbert, this instrument is nothing much to look at, but what is inside defines the state of the art worldwide – he says, as he displays the spectrum of a drop of a certain salt melted at a temperature of more than 1000 degrees. “It took us ten years to get the people at MIT (Massachusetts Institue of Technology) to admit that we could obtain a spectrum of that quality,” he said.

The research programs with which Prof. Gilbert has been associated up to now have to do with the development of chemical, physico-chemical, and physical methods of analysis, especially using Raman spectroscopy and electrochemistry. They also bear on the application of these techniques of analysis to various problems. Most of these problems come from industry – aluminum metallurgy, the glass industry, or petrochemicals – but archaeology, art history, and criminology (forensics) have also called on this expertise.