Making Raman Spectroscopy More Accessible

For decades, Raman spectroscopy was a cumbersome, expensive research tool relegated to laboratories and arcane experiments.

But, today’s economical, compact lasers and detectors make Raman spectroscopy a practical solution for non-destructive chemical identification across a range of new markets — including pharmaceutical processing, forensics, law-enforcement and homeland security.

Raman has been considered a high-resolution application. But, for many identification problems in commercial markets, such laboratory-level resolution is not necessary. A high-performance Raman system will typically achieve resolution of 2 to 4 cm-1.

Depending on choice of grating and entrance slit, lower-cost systems can still reach resolution of 6 to 11 cm-1. In other words, it is possible to o btain a system with resolution only 2-3x that of a laboratory instrument for a cost that is substantially lower.