Waters Symposium: Raman Spectroscopy edited by
Waters Symposium
C. W. Gardner ChemImage Corporation Pittsburgh, PA 15208
The 14th Annual James L. Waters Symposium at Pittcon: Raman Spectroscopy Charles W. Gardner ChemImage Corporation, 7301 Penn Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15208;
[email protected] The James L. Waters Annual Symposium is a unique component of the Pittsburgh Conference (Pittcon) technical program. Waters, founder of the well-known Waters Associates, Inc. and currently president of Waters Business Systems, Inc., proposed in 1989 that the Society for Analytical Chemists of Pittsburgh (SACP) offer an annual symposium exploring the origin, development, implementation, and commercialization of scientific instrumentation of established and major significance. The objective of the symposia is to recognize pioneers in the development of instrumentation by preserving the early history of the cooperation and important contributions of inventors, scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, and marketing organizations. These symposia examine how new instrumentation and, hence, new fields of science and technology are created and evolve. Past topics of Waters Symposia have included gas chromatography, atomic absorption, infrared spectroscopy, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, mass spectrometry, X-ray diffraction, ion chromatography, and lasers, among others. The SACP places a high priority on publishing the proceedings as a means of extending the educational outreach of the Waters Symposia. The papers of the first symposium were published in LC–GC Magazine (1) and those of the next four in Analytical Chemistry (2). Since 1997, the papers have appeared in this Journal (3). At the 2003 Symposium, the Chemical Heritage Foundation also collected oral histories of the technique through personal interviews with the speakers, thus adding a new dimension to the preservation of the educational value of the Symposia. The topic of the 14th Waters Symposium, held in March 2003, was Raman spectroscopy. Sir C. V. Raman first discovered the process of inelastic scattering of light by a material in 1928. The scientific community immediately recognized the importance of this discovery and Raman was awarded the 1930 Nobel Prize in Physics. Raman spectroscopy, as it had grown to be called, unfortunately suffered one major disadvantage: while the Raman effect is very characteristic of a molecule, it is extremely weak. In fact, only about one millionth of the light scattered by a material exhibits the Raman effect. This posed problems in both the monochrometers used to isolate the small Raman signals and with the systems used to detect the Raman-scattered light. Another problem that has plagued Raman spectroscopy is interference from sample fluorescence. These problems slowed the everyday laboratory acceptance of Raman spectroscopy in the years following its discovery. However, starting in the 1970s a number of enabling
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technologies started becoming commercially available and these led to the revitalization of Raman spectroscopy. Therefore, in order to explore this recent chapter in the commercialization history of Raman spectroscopy, one really needs to explore the development of the enabling technologies that made it possible. The following four articles focus on several of these enabling technologies that have made Raman spectroscopy a routine analysis tool in thousands of laboratories worldwide. The development of the first of these key technologies, the laser, has already been explored in the 8th Waters Symposium. This symposium instead will focus on the impact of holographic filters, array detectors, and Fourier transform data processing on the evolution of Raman instrumentation. In the first article, Fran Adar (HORIBA Jobin Yvon Inc.) focuses on the history of Raman instrumentation development at three of the pioneering instrument companies, Spex, Dilor, and Jobin Yvon, and sets the stage for the discussion of enabling technologies. The first of these, the volume-phase holographic filter is discussed by a key figure in its commercialization, Harry Owen (Kaiser Optical Systems). In the next article, Bonner Denton (University of Arizona) discusses the development of another enabling technology for modern Raman spectroscopy, array detectors. The final article discusses the development of Raman instruments based on Fourier transform data processing from the point of view of one of its inventors, Bruce Chase (DuPont Experimental Station). Literature Cited 1. Gas chromatography: LC–GC 1990, 8, 716–724; LC–GC 1990, 8, 782–786; LC–GC 1990, 8, 854–860. 2. (a) Atomic absorption spectroscopy: Anal. Chem. 1991, 63, 924A– 941A; Anal. Chem. 1991, 63, 1025A–1038A. (b) Infrared spectroscopy: Anal. Chem. 1992, 64, 824A–838A; Anal. Chem. 1992, 64, 868A–883A. (c) Nuclear magnetic spectrometry: Anal. Chem. 1993, 65, 725A–753A. (d) Mass spectrometry: Anal. Chem. 1994, 66, 969A–975A; Anal. Chem. 1994, 66, 961A–964A. 3. (a) High-performance liquid chromatography: J. Chem. Educ. 1997, 74, 37–48. (b) Ion selective electrodes: J. Chem. Educ. 1997, 74, 159–182. (c) Lasers in chemistry: J. Chem. Educ. 1998, 75, 555–570. (d) Immunoassay: J. Chem. Educ. 1999, 76, 767–792. (e) Atomic emission spectroscopy: J. Chem. Educ. 2000, 77, 573–607. (f ) X-ray diffraction: J. Chem. Educ. 2001, 78, 601–616. (g) Ion chromatography: J. Chem. Educ. 2004, 81, 1277–1302. (h) Electron spectroscopy: J. Chem. Educ. 2004, 81, 1725–1766.
Vol. 84 No. 1 January 2007
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Journal of Chemical Education
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