Designed and Developed Low Cost Raman Spectroscopic System

Abstract

ABSTRACT Raman spectroscopy (RS) is a well-known optical technique for the study of molecular constituents of samples. However, many RS systems designed are usually immobile, quite cumbersome, and/or relatively expensive limiting the extensive use of this technique. In this study, we report a simple low-cost RS system designed with a 445 nm diode laser source, an absorptive edge filter, a USB2000 spectrometer and other relatively affordable auxiliary optical components. This makes our system suitably cost efficient for non-invasive, non- destructive objective evaluation of a sample matrix to determine its molecular constituents. Additionally, a computational procedure known as the Second Derivative Method for Raman Peak Recognition and Range Independent background subtraction Algorithm (SDM-RPR-RIA) was included for the recovery of Raman Signals from the fluorescence contaminated signals observed with the system. The low-cost RS system was employed to determine the Raman spectra of several known chemical samples. Identified functional groups including Amide (NH), organic acid (COOH), alcohol (ROH), hydroxyl (OH), methyl (CH3) and methylene (CH2) have all been established, based on their peak parameters, which is consistent with known results in literature. Measurements from our developed system, besides molecular identification, indicate that the developed low cost RS system setup is equally useful for polarisation and calibration studies. It is expected that the developed low cost RS system setup will become a suitable cost effective alternative to commercial Raman systems for use in academic, industrial settings, and for other novel applications among developing countries.