A Python-based web tool to simulate atomic optical emission spectra

Abstract

Optical emission spectroscopy (OES) is an experimental technique for analyzing, diagnosing, and characterizing atomic and molecular species in physics and chemistry. In this work, an interactive web tool is designed to simulate atomic OES from which users can generate synthetic data from optical emission spectra at a wavelength range from 390 to 700 nm with any reported energy level. The reference data for eighty-three elements was retrieved from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) using web scraping techniques. The web tool incorporates key parameters such as wavelength step size (λ), full width at half maximum (FWHM), and emission source temperature (T). The proposed method for generating spectra consists of preprocessing, calculation, and plotting of the data using Python,    Pandas, NumPy, and Matplotlib, respectively. Finally, the interactive user interface, built with the open-source Python framework Streamlit, displays changes in spectral plots generated from input data and updates live, supporting zoom, serving as a valuable resource for researchers and students in the field of OES.