Qualitative and quantitative pharmaceutical analysis with a novel hand-held miniature near infrared spectrometer

Although miniaturisation of vibrational spectrometers began approximately a decade ago, only within the last couple of years have real hand-held Raman, infrared and near infrared (NIR) scanning spectrometers became commercially available. On the customer end the development of portable instrumentation was driven by the request for more flexibility of on-site measurements and on the manufacturer side it was supported by the potential and advantages of micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) production and the implementation of new technologies. With reference to NIR spectroscopy the expectations for a real hand-held system (<100 g) have been recently realised by a pocket-sized spectrometer with a linear variable filter technology (LVF) as monochromator principle and the additional benefit of significantly reduced costs compared to other portable systems. For a real breakthrough and impact of this instrument, however, it had to be demonstrated that competitive analytical results can be achieved. In this respect, the present communication has put to test the performance of this micro-NIR system with reference to selected qualitative and quantitative pharmaceutical applications. © The authors 2013 All rights reserved.