Imagine having the ability to quickly determine the safety of berries and mushrooms during a hike or rapidly identify pathogens in a hospital setting that used to take days to identify.
All of this can become possible with the innovative combination of a cellphone camera and a Raman spectrometer, a cutting-edge laser chemical analysis technique. It can enable the identification and detection of drugs, chemicals, and biological molecules that are not visible to the human eye.
Dr. Peter Rentzepis, a professor at Texas A&M University’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, has developed a patented handheld cellphone-based Raman spectrometer system. This breakthrough invention enables users to non-invasively identify potentially hazardous chemicals or substances while in the field, particularly in remote areas where traditional laboratory spectrometers are impractical due to their size and power requirements.
This innovative Raman spectrometer system combines lenses, a diode laser, and a diffraction grating with a cellphone camera to capture and analyze Raman spectra. By analyzing peaks in the spectrum, this system can provide in-depth information about the chemical composition and molecular structure of a substance based on their intensities and positions.
Using this device is simple – just place a cellphone behind the transmission grating with the camera facing the grating to record the Raman spectrum. A laser is then directed at a sample, such as a bacterium, on a slide, and the camera records the spectrum. Once paired with a suitable cellphone application/database, this handheld instrument allows for rapid identification of on-site materials.
Previously, identifying unknown substances involved time-consuming sampling and laboratory analysis. However, this new invention offers a cost-effective and rapid alternative. Traditional Raman spectrometers can be expensive, but this system can be produced at a significantly lower cost, making rapid material identification accessible to a wider audience.
“It’s a small device that can tell you the composition of a particular system, material or sample,” Rentzepis said. “You can even have it in your pocket.”
Fellow inventors are former graduate students Dr. Dinesh Dhankhar, a system engineer at Thermo Fisher Scientific, and Anushka Nagpal, a process engineer at Intel Corporation.
