Anthony Boulanger, founder and CTO of GreenTropism was at RamanFest, the International Conference that brings together the global Raman community to share, learn and discuss how Raman spectroscopy, and its derivatives, is applied to life science, materials science and environmental issues of today and tomorrow; he spoke about the discrimination of 3 respiratory viruses using SERS spectroscopy coupled with GreenTropism’s Artificial Intelligence.
Raman spectroscopy is a non-destructive analysis technique of the structure of a molecule. This technology is based on Raman scattering, a phenomenon observed by Râman in 1928 in organic liquids.
During Raman scattering, an energy exchange occurs between the sample and the monochromatic source (visible or near infrared). This energy exchange induces a variation of the frequency of the scattered photons with respect to the excitation frequency. The variation then depends on the molecular structure of the sample that has been excited by the source.
Raman signals are weak by nature. To increase the sensitivity of the measurement, the exaltation by SERS effect is often used. SERS signal enhancement uses metal surfaces with nanometer scale particles that are added to the sample to be analyzed.