Map of the Month – November

Welcome to Edinburgh Instruments’ newest blog celebrating our work in Raman, Photoluminescence, and Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging. Every month we will highlight our pick for Map of the Month to show how our spectrometers can be used to reveal all the hidden secrets in your samples.

November

To the human eye a fingerprint is nothing more than a fingerprint – but place it under a microscope and suddenly things get a bit more interesting. We can now see deposits of small particles over the fingerprint, shown in red on this Raman map. These particles indicate what the person who was responsible for the fingerprint had last touched. The microscope has allowed the investigator to see the trace particles present, and now the spectroscopic identification comes in to play. Thanks to Raman spectroscopy’s fingerprint-like chemical identification, the Raman spectrum from these particles can easily be identified as paracetamol, by comparing against a library of known drug spectra.

This is just one way Raman microscopy is a great tool for forensic laboratories. Find out more in this application note.

Discover the our range of Raman Microscopes

If you would like to find out more about how our Raman Microscopes can be utilised in your lab, contact our sales team who will be happy to help.