Sensors, Vol. 21, Pages 5067: Noise Sources and Requirements for Confocal Raman Spectrometers in Biosensor Applications

Sensors, Vol. 21, Pages 5067: Noise Sources and Requirements for Confocal Raman Spectrometers in Biosensor Applications Sensors doi: 10.3390/s21155067 Authors: Izabella J. Jahn Alexej Grjasnow Henry John Karina Weber Jürgen Popp Walter Hauswald Raman spectroscopy probes the biochemical composition of samples in a non-destructive, non-invasive and label-free fashion yielding specific information on a molecular level. Nevertheless, the Raman effect is very weak. The detection of all inelastically scattered photons with highest efficiency is therefore crucial as well as the identification of all noise sources present in the system. Here we provide a study for performance comparison and assessment of different spectrometers for confocal Raman spectroscopy in biosensor applications. A low-cost, home-built Raman spectrometer with a complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) camera, a middle price-class mini charge-coupled device (CCD) Raman spectrometer and a laboratory grade confocal Raman system with a deeply cooled CCD detector are compared. It is often overlooked that the sample itself is the most important “optical” component in a Raman spectrometer and its properties contribute most significantly to the signal-to-noise ratio. For this purpose, different representative samples: a crystalline silicon wafer, a polypropylene sample and E. coli bacteria were measured under similar conditions using the three confocal Raman spectrometers. We show that bios...
Source: Sensors - Category: Biotechnology Authors: Tags: Article Source Type: research