Raman In-Depth Focus 2017

• Photobleaching profile of Raman peaks and fluorescence background
  Laser-induced fluorescence is the most common source of interfering baseline signal encountered in Raman measurements. One of the challenges in the successful use of Raman spectroscopy is to extract Raman signatures from this, orders of magnitude stronger, broadband fluorescence emission. Photobleaching is one effective technique to reduce the level of fluorescence emission, thus increasing the signal to noise (S/N) ratio of a spectrum. Derya Cebeci-Maltaş, Md Anik Alam, Ping Wang, Rodolfo Pinal and Dor Ben-Amotz explain how they use this technique in their Raman work.
• Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopic sensing of glucose
  The small normal Raman cross-section of glucose is a major challenge in its detection by surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) for medical applications, such as blood glucose level monitoring of diabetic patients and evaluation of patients with other medical conditions, since glucose is a marker for many human diseases. Laila Al-qarni and Zafar Iqbal discuss the use of commercially available multilayer graphene sheets as substrates on which gold nanoparticles are chemically assembled by reduction of sodium citrate.