Raman Spectroscopy

Karen Faulds of the University of Strathclyde co-authored a paper where SESORS signals could be detected from nanotags at depths down to 48 mm for the first time using a handheld spatially offset Raman (SORS) instrument. She recently spoke to Spectroscopy about this and some of her other papers and the advances in the science that made them possible. Faulds is the 2022 recipient of the RSC Analytical Division Mid-Career Award. This interview is part of an ongoing series of interviews with the winners of awards that are presented at the annual SciX conference, which will be held this year from October 2 through October 7, in Covington, Kentucky.

Raman and XRF spectroscopy were used to examine paint in artwork, revealing the potential of both techniques to verify the authenticity of famous works of art.

James Piret, and Robin Turner, of Michael Smith Laboratories (Vancouver, BC Canada) and the University of British Columbia (UBC) have been exploring the benefits of extracting and displaying correlated spectrometric and non-spectrometric variables with a proposed method called multisource correlation analysis (MuSCA). Their work has uncovered several advantages of using Raman spectroscopy for these applications. Here, they discuss their efforts to develop an approach that permitted the integration of diverse biochemical information with measured spectra for co-analysis to characterize the spectra and take advantage of the available spectral information.

Wei Min, of the Department of Chemistry at Columbia University in New York City, and his associates recently published a paper outlining their devising a set of multiplexed Raman molecular probes with sharp and mutually resolvable Raman peaks to simultaneously quantify cell surface proteins, endocytosis activities, and metabolic dynamics of an individual live cell. Min, who recently spoke to us about this work, is the 2022 recipient of the Craver Award, presented annually at FACSS SciX to recognize the efforts of young professional spectroscopists that have made significant contributions in applied analytical vibrational spectroscopy.

In this study, in situ Raman spectroscopy was used to detect the formation, growth, and evolution of corrosion inside a salt fog chamber. These results pave the way for monitoring the real-time observation of corrosion on metal surfaces.

Here, we explain how Raman spectroscopy is valuable for characterizing industrially important carbon materials.

As an alternative drug delivery route, transdermal patches control the amount of medication a patient receives. With confocal Raman microscopy it is possible to create a Raman 3D map and thus visualize and analyze the layers of a transdermal patch without damaging it, allowing for quality control and stability measurements.

In this second part of this four-part series on spectroscopy instrument components, we take a closer look at optical components or subassemblies used for vibrational spectroscopy instruments.

Several types of Raman spectroscopy, including Fourier transform (FT)–Raman and dispersive Raman, are well suited to examine and understand the fat compositional heterogeneity in solid foods, identify polymorph or crystallinity, and measure fatty acid saturation.

Raman spectroscopy is a valuable tool for research and quality control of lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries, which are a critical aspect of renewable energy technologies. We highlight two cases of bulk analysis of lithium compounds using Raman spectroscopy.

Our annual review of new products for atomic and molecular spectroscopy, including details by category and highlights of overarching trends.

The case studies presented here successfully demonstrate the use of inline Raman spectroscopic analysis to estimate solvent content during the solvent exchange and distillation operations in the synthesis of active pharmaceutical ingredients.

Justin Sambur, an assistant professor of chemistry at Colorado State University is the 2022 winner of the Society for Electroanalytical Chemistry (SEAC) Royce W. Murray Young Investigator Award.

Seven common mistakes in the analysis of Raman spectra can lead to overestimating the performance of a model.

High-performance instrumentation requires many critical components. We focus here on energy sources, lasers, and detectors.

The “fingerprint in the fingerprint” region is key for active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) identity testing. We explain why.

Determining the quality of the food we consume is important not just for reasons of safety, but for verifying authenticity as well. Changmou Xu, a Research Associate Professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL), and his colleagues have been exploring methods for food analysis that are rapid but do not harm the environment or the analysts.

As global food supplies and security have been challenged by water scarcity and climate variations, the expected increase in food demand will require a corresponding increase in crop productivity and disruptive improvements in agricultural production systems, including implementing strategies to mitigate the degradation of crop yield caused by plant diseases. Several groups have explored the use of Raman spectroscopy for rapid diagnosis of such diseases.

Raman spectra can help determine protein structure. Here’s how.

The Covid-19 pandemic has led to extraordinary developments of both testing methods and vaccines. Can spectroscopy play a role in next-generation testing for Covid and other pathogens?

A multiscale convolutional neural network (MsCNN) was used to screen Raman spectra of the hepatitis B serum, achieving higher classification accuracy compared to traditional machine learning methods.

As forensic analysis continues to advance, such as in the understanding of source identification and analysis of trace quantities of bodily fluids, spectroscopic techniques and machine learning are playing a significant role. Igor K. Lednev, a chemistry professor at the University at Albany, SUNY, in Albany, New York, has been working in this field with his team. The analytical methods currently under investigation include Raman spectroscopy, attenuated total reflection Fourier transform infrared (ATR FT-IR) spectroscopy, and advanced chemometric classification and analysis methods. We recently interviewed him about his work.

We explain how to characterize barium fluorohalides with Raman spectroscopy.

Innovative database search technology can help Raman spectroscopists identify molecular vibrations; here, we show how to use these tools more effectively.

In this study, the nitrophenol isomers, in solid and liquid phases, were analyzed using Raman spectroscopy, laying the groundwork for determining nitrophenol isomers in environmental monitoring with this technique.