Raman spectroscopy in the analysis of food and pharmaceutical nanomaterials

Abstract

Raman scattering is an inelastic phenomenon. Although its cross section is very small, recent advances in electronics, lasers, optics, and nanotechnology have made Raman spectroscopy suitable in many areas of application. The present article reviews the applications of Raman spectroscopy in food and drug analysis and inspection, including those associated with nanomaterials. Brief overviews of basic Raman scattering theory, instrumentation, and statistical data analysis are also given. With the advent of Raman enhancement mechanisms and the progress being made in metal nanomaterials and nanoscale metal surfaces fabrications, surface enhanced Raman scattering spectroscopy has become an extra sensitive method, which is applicable not only for analysis of foods and drugs, but also for intracellular and intercellular imaging. A Raman spectrometer coupled with a fiber optics probe has great potential in applications such as monitoring and quality control in industrial food processing, food safety in agricultural plant production, and convenient inspection of pharmaceutical products, even through different types of packing. A challenge for the routine application of surface enhanced Raman scattering for quantitative analysis is reproducibility. Success in this area can be approached with each or a combination of the following methods: (1) fabrication of nanostructurally regular and uniform substrates; (2) application of statistic data analysis; and (3) isotopic dilution.

Pharmaceutical Characterization and Detection Using Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering

“…Raman spectroscopy is very useful in drug analysis due to advantages such as ease of use, minimal sample handling, and the significant differences in scattering strength between packaging materials, tablet excipients, and active drug components [1][2][3]. It can also be used to identify isomers and to determine energy difference between isomers.…”

Towards SERS based applications in food analytics: Lipophilic sensor layers for the detection of Sudan III in food matrices

“…Due to its high specificity Raman spectroscopy is a suitable and widely used method for a high number of analytical tasks [31][32][33][34][35][36]. However, the Raman-effect is a very weak scattering process.…”

Electron paramagnetic resonance monitoring for on-demand electrochemically-generated radicals

“…Spectroscopic techniques, such as X-ray [1][2][3][4][5], infrared (IR) and Raman [6][7][8][9], UV-vis [10][11][12], nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) [13][14][15], and EPR [16][17][18][19] spectroscopies are versatile tools for chemical analysis, particularly in the pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical fields. Many of these spectroscopic techniques are routinely utilized in drug applications, such as characterizing formulations or elucidating the kinetic processes associated with drug delivery.…”