A research team from the University of Washington has used the Raman Explorer 785 from Headwall Photonics for the analysis of hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, at depths of up to 2300m.
The spectrometer was initially designed for mineral exploration on Mars, but its small size and high-performance has made it ideal for a variety of other applications. Brian Marquadt, a principal investigator at the Centre for Process Analytical Chemistry at the University of Washington, said: ‘The Raman Explorer is a very compact instrument, but provided a Raman fingerprint of 4000 wave numbers with very high resolution.’
Headwall Photonics has recently released the Raman Explorer 532, utilising a 532nm excitation laser that will further increase the number of possible applications. It is currently being tested for use in chemical and biological threat assessment.