Portable and Handheld Spectroscopy

Counterfeit and illicit tobacco may contain potentially toxic organic impurities that result in adverse health effects to the consumer. The aim of this work was to investigate the feasibility of the identification of organic impurities in counterfeit or illicit tobacco using attenuated total reflectance-Fourier transform infrared (ATR-FT-IR) spectroscopy.

The Raman technique is gaining widespread acceptance as an investigative tool for forensic applications.

An interview with Vassili Karanassios, of the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. His research focuses on micro- and nano-analysis and the development of miniaturized instruments for on-site applications.

Conventional pneumatic nebulizer-spray chamber combinations for ICP spectrometry have a sample introduction efficiency of only 1-3%. A unique electrothermal vaporization device developed by Vassili Karanassios of the University of Waterloo uses field-portable rhenium filament coils with a very small vaporization chamber and increases the sample introduction efficiency to 100%.

Handheld Raman analyzers have found widespread use in the pharmaceutical industry for excipients and raw materials verification, and in first responder/security applications. Most portable Raman units utilize lasers operating at 785 nm because of the relatively good signal strength at this wavelength.

Click here to view the complete Wavelength newsletter from August 20, 2013.

Handheld Raman spectrometers have been used to identify a variety of chemical materials, including toxic industrial chemicals, chemical warfare agents, explosives, narcotics, pharmaceutical compounds, and plastics. Researcher Mathew Lyman of the Chemical, Biological, Radiological Nuclear and Explosives Division at Oklahoma State University - University Multispectral Laboratories (OSU-UML) spoke to Spectroscopy about his and his colleague Jessica Randall's use of a handheld Raman spectrometer for identifying bacterial growth media.

A modern portable Raman instrument equipped with a 1064-nm laser is compared to one using a 785-nm laser for the identification of counterfeit pharmaceuticals.

The feasibility of identifying different types of bacterial growth media using a handheld Raman instrument with a proprietary baseline correction algorithm is investigated.

Portable molecular spectroscopy techniques used in the pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical industries consist of Raman, infrared (IR), and near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy.

Click here to view the complete Wavelength newsletter from December 11, 2012.

Market Profile: Laboratory and Portable IR and NIR in Environmental Analyses

Raman spectroscopy is a powerful analytical technique that has rapidly developed from an impractical concept into a powerful handheld technique. The inherent advantages of Raman spectroscopy have led to rapid growth in demand from pharmaceutical and government organizations. As is typical in a fast-growing market, the competitive landscape is very dynamic.

Raman is a well-developed and implemented qualitative spectroscopic tool for molecular identification, but in recent years with the development of high resolution portable Raman spectrometers and cutting edge chemometric modeling, software has now enabled the use of Raman for highly precise quantitative measurements of mixtures and reactions.

Major technological advances have allowed the market for handheld and portable Fourier-transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy to develop almost overnight. Demand from a variety of industries and applications is continuing to take shape, and many major vendors in the market have taken note and made sure to grab themselves a major stake in this fast growing area.

Raman spectroscopy offers a rapid, simple, and nondestructive technique for the identification of counterfeit medicines. The advantages of handheld Raman spectroscopy are that it is easy to use by unskilled personnel and it can identify a test pharmaceutical product on the spot, whether the product is in solid or liquid form. However, these instruments can operate only in reflection mode, and the Raman activity of a sample is often masked by fluorescent species in the sample, especially when the analysis is made in reflection mode. The objective of this work was to compare the use of a handheld and laboratory-based Raman instruments for authentication of pharmaceutical products obtained from the world market.

A portable Raman analyzer with laser excitation at 1550 nm provides "eye-safe" explosives detection.

Demand for portable and handheld near infrared (NIR) instruments has exploded over the past several years, mirroring trends in other handheld spectroscopy techniques.

The authors demonstrate the rapid and accurate laboratory measurement of cotton fiber micronaire trends at the cotton field with portable near infrared instrumentation.

Raman spectroscopy in general, and specifically, handheld and portable Raman, has developed very rapidly over the past decade due to technological developments that have unleashed the advantages of the technique. Portable/handheld Raman spectroscopy has gone from an insignificant market to the largest portable molecular spectroscopy technique in just a few years.

Interest in vibrational spectroscopy, principally Raman and mid-IR (FT-IR) continues to increase as these analytical techniques may be applied to a wide variety of fields, including the safety/security sector. Raman and FT-IR have seen rapid deployment for use in homeland security applications, largely due to the high chemical specificity which allows robust identification. In this article, we discuss the application of the latest portable, rugged Raman and FT-IR handhelds, enabling robust identification of explosives, TICs, TIMs, and narcotics in the field. This article introduces explosives, their different classes, and the applicability of Raman and FT-IR spectroscopy to identify their components (commercial, HMEs, and IEDs) or precursors.

A small niche market within fluorescence spectroscopy is portable fluorometers. Primary applications are in the agricultural industry, but there is considerable potential elsewhere. The market landscape is small and fragmented, with no dominant leader, and significant potential for growth.

As portable instrumentation continues to find commercial success as viable alternative to traditional laboratory equipment, factors such as ruggedness, sensitivity, speed, and reliability become increasingly important. In this session sponsored by the Coblentz Society, five presentations will discuss handheld instrumentation for techniques including ion mobility spectrometry (IMS), energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence (EDXRF), laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS), Raman and FT-IR spectroscopy, and UV, visible, and NIR spectroscopy.

This article discusses instruments that can be used in the field to rapidly and accurately identify various explosives and their precursors.

This article discusses instruments that can be used in the field to rapidly and accurately identify various explosives and their precursors.