RAMANwalk by Nanophoton

The RAMANwalk follows a new approach compared to traditional Raman microscopes - and that's why it stands out from the crowd. Highest spectral quality and super fast Raman image previews make it the perfect choice for routine.

The RAMANwalk offers:

• Reduce imaging time by random-walk technology
• Galvanic mirror for laser beam steering
  
• High spectral and spatial resolution
• Completely automated hardware
• Powerful analysis for 2D/3D Raman images
• Auto-calibration and auto-alignment
  

Introducing the basics:

Unlike a conventional Raman microscope, where the laser beam moves from the upper left to the lower right of the sample using stage movement, the RAMANwalk makes laser movement much faster and smarter by using galvanic mirrors.

Additionally, Nanophoton implemented a novel scanning method that actively searches for Raman signal. Even if a sample is low in visual contrast, the laser beam will find it purely by chemical information of the Raman spectra.

Whenever the system identifies a Raman signal, it checks the surrounding area for more of that signal. As soon as it can't find more of it, the probability for this area is decreased and it moves to a different area in a very rapid movement.

Let's look at an example:

In this case we are looking at a sample of PMMA (purple) and Polystyrene (green) beads. In the visual image the look roughly the same, with the PMMA particles being slightly smaller.

After 40 seconds of deploying the random walk algorithm of RAMANwalk, we can already make out a few rough details. It is far from giving us an actual picture but is a great first indication of what our sample is made of.

After 3 minutes, finer details start to emerge. At this point, the user can already decide if it is worth to wait until completen of the Raman measurement. If so, after roughly 27 minutes, the complete Raman image at full resolution is collected.

The RAMANwalks random walk algorithm provides you with exceptionally quick Raman image previews to accelerate your routine Raman analysis tasks significantly. Let's look at another example.

Here you can see the microscopic image of sugar and polyvinylacetate (PVA). The full Raman image takes approx. 50 min to collect and detects small pieces of PVA (blue) among larger pieces of sugar (yellow).

Let's say you were interested in the PVA contamination only.

Using the RAMANwalk's random walk algorithm you would need only approx. 5 minutes to find a conclusive answer on the question: is there PVA in my sample?

In comparison, a traditional raster scan using a classic Raman microscope would have only finished 10 % of the total measurement - with no PVA in sight!

That means, that especially for quick analytical tasks, where the depth of detail can be reduced, or when only the selection of region of interest for a Raman imaging deep dive is necessary - the RAMANwalk saves users precious time.

Work smarter. Not Harder.