American Laboratory
By Barbara Foster
Micro Raman was big news at Pittcon 2012. While the hardware has stabilized, there were intriguing new developments in the science and its applications.
Bridging the microscopy/spectroscopy chasm
Historically, atomic force microscopy (AFM) has been the gateway for Raman microscopy, but the emphasis at Pittcon was on the optical. Major manufacturers—from micro Raman industry leaders Renishaw (www.renishaw.com) and Horiba (www.horiba.com) to Bruker Optics (www.brukeroptics.com), Jasco (www.jascoinc.com), Kaiser Optical Systems (www.kosi.com), and Thermo Fisher Scientific (www.thermofisher.com)—all featured fully integrated systems, typically centered on Olympus BX research-level microscopes (www.olympusamerica.com). (WITec [www.witec.de] and CRAIC Technologies [www.microspectra.com], which follow similar formats, elected not to exhibit at Pittcon this year.)
