Ultrasensitive Fiber Enhanced UV Resonance Raman Sensing of Drugs

Fiber enhanced UV resonance Raman spectroscopy is introduced for chemical selective and ultrasensitive analysis of drugs in aqueous media. The application of hollow-core optical fibers provides a miniaturized sample container for analyte flow and efficient light-guiding, thus leading to strong light–analyte interactions and highly improved analytical sensitivity with the lowest sample demand. The Raman signals of the important antimalaria drugs chloroquine and mefloquine were strongly enhanced utilizing deep UV and electronic resonant excitation augmented by fiber enhancement. An experimental design was developed and realized for reproducible and quantitative Raman fiber sensing, thus the enhanced Raman signals of the pharmaceuticals show excellent linear relationship with sample concentration. A thorough model accounts for the different effects on signal performance in resonance Raman fiber sensing, and conclusions are drawn how to improve fiber enhanced Raman spectroscopy (FERS) for chemical selective analysis with picomolar sensitivity.