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Articles

Dr. Jeanita Pritchett offers insight on how science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) students can transition into a successful scientific career after graduation.

Beyond the Beaker: How to Advance Your Scientific Career

Click the title above to open the Spectroscopy January regular issue, Volume 36, Issue 1, in an interactive PDF format.

Vol 36 No 1 Spectroscopy January 2021 Regular Issue PDF

The 2020 Spectroscopy salary and employment survey shows an increase in salaries from previous survey years. Salary, however, does not tell the whole story. We look at broader employment trends, including job satisfaction, workload, workplace bullying, the job market for spectroscopists, and more.

2020 Salary Survey: What Are Today’s Career Trends?

Several leading scientists discuss their work to advance XRF and XRD techniques.

Trends in X-Ray Techniques

Analytical spectroscopy is a mature field, but advances in instrumentation, measurement, and sample preparation techniques continue to be made. Much recent development has seen a heavy emphasis towards techniques and instrumentation that allow for non-invasive, in-situ, and in-vivo procedures while still retaining a high degree of sensitivity. This article will review some of this progress over the past two to three years across five major spectroscopic fields: Raman, LIBS, XRF, IR, and ICP techniques.

Recent Trends in Analytical Spectroscopy: A Push Toward In Situ, In Vivo, and Minimally Invasive Techniques

Rohit Bhargava is with the Department of Bioengineering and Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois.

Emerging Trends and Opportunities in Discrete-Frequency Infrared and Raman Spectroscopic Imaging

Spectroscopy in Real-World Applications: Current Trends in XRF, LIBS, NIR, QCLs, FT-IR, ICP-MS, and Raman

Several leading scientists discuss recent developments and trends in XRF and XRD techniques.

Trends in X-ray Fluorescence and X-ray Diffraction

Recent advances in instrumentation have enabled new forms of vibrational chemical imaging, including discrete frequency infrared (DFIR) microscopy and stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) microscopy. These technologies may represent a fundamental shift in how we approach spectroscopic imaging: rather than collecting full spectra which contain redundant information, measuring a few important spectral frequencies may enable significant gains in speed, throughput, signal to noise ratio, and/or image quality. For infrared microscopy, these advantages may be compounded by High Definition IR microscopy. Here we discuss recent advances in infrared and nonlinear Raman imaging through the lens of 'discrete frequency' approaches, including several examples of applications and critical issues in instrumentation that are likely to be dominating research themes in the near future.

This article discusses emerging trends in the design and use of spectroscopic instrumentation. It focuses on recent research using new or modified spectroscopic techniques that are advancing scientists’ capability to obtain high-content, high-resolution data from ever-smaller sample sizes. To illustrate this trend, the article surveys novel approaches to complex measurement problems across a wide range of critical fields such as disease research, food safety, environmental monitoring, and drug development.