Imec details Raman-on-chip for handheld spectroscopy
At this week’s SPIE BIOS and SPIE Photonics West 2019 in San Francisco, imec will present an on-chip solution for Raman spectroscopy. It is based on a newly patented concept providing high optical throughput and high spectral resolution. This could pave the way for affordable high-end, handheld Raman spectroscopy devices, opening up new applications, predicts imec.
Raman spectroscopy is most often used to determine chemical and material composition in the medical, food, even space industries. Existing devices can be bulky and expensive costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. Handheld solutions exist, but fail to reach the desired performance for high-end applications, largely because of the limited scaling capacity of conventional dispersive Raman spectrometry where scattered light is focused on a slit. Scaling while maintaining high spectral resolution (less than 1nm) means reducing the size of the slit which immediately limits the optical throughput, explains research hub, imec.
Imec’s patent-pending concept is to use massive parallelisation of waveguide interferometers integrated monolithically on top of a CMOS image sensor. In this way, reports imec, both high optical throughput and high spectral resolution can be reached in a miniaturised device. The system is built in imec’s SiN biophotonics platform which guarantees robustness and compatibility with high-volume manufacturing, says imec. Part of the work was performed under the EU-funded IoSense program.
Pol Van Dorpe, principal member of the technical staff at imec described the concept as a “milestone which can mean a breakthrough for the general applicability of Raman spectroscopy”. He believes it could be used in areas like food analysis, melanoma detection, or skin hydration and in the medical domain, for in-line measurements during surgery or endoscopy as well as to perform material analysis using a compact system for space exploration.
