Infrared spectral data of natural and man-made textile fibres for material identification and classification

This article presents a structured dataset of attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectra acquired from natural and man-made textile fibres, compiled to support research in forensic, analytical, and environmental science. The collection comprises 160 spectra obtained from 137 verified textile samples originating from multiple sources, including industry reference collections and academic textile archives. The dataset includes several processing levels: (1) raw instrument files in PerkinElmer .sp format; and (2–5) tabular feature matrices containing unprocessed transmission spectra, baseline-corrected spectra, averaged baseline-corrected spectra grouped by fibre subtype, and fully pre-processed spectra prepared for chemometric and machine-learning workflows. All spectra were recorded using a Frontier FT-IR spectrometer by PerkinElmer equipped with a single-reflection diamond ATR accessory. Measurements were performed over the 4000–550 cm⁻¹ range at 4 cm⁻¹ resolution with four co-added scans per acquisition. Metadata describing sample identity and fibre characteristics are supplied. The resulting collection provides an openly accessible resource for material identification, spectral comparison, and the development or benchmarking of classification algorithms.