B&W Tek announces enhanced high resolution Raman spectrometer

B&W Tek, Inc., an advanced instrumentation company producing optical spectroscopy and laser systems, has recently enhanced the industry leading i-Raman® high resolution TE cooled Raman spectrometer as well as introduced a state of the art chemometric software package, BWIQ™.

The i-Raman® is equipped with B&W Tek’s patented CleanLaze® technology for exceptional laser stabilization and narrow linewidth. Other features include a spectral resolution as fine as 3cm-1, wide Raman shift coverage up to 4000cm-1, and a TE cooled 2048 pixel CCD array. With a convenient fiber optic interface, it can collect data to within 65cm-1 of the Rayleigh Line. It is unique for its high resolution combined with field-portability, with performance comparable to large bench-top Raman systems and weighing less than 7 lbs. The system’s small footprint, lightweight design, and low power consumption provides research grade Raman capabilities anywhere!

The i-Raman® now offers an 830nm excitation wavelength option in addition to the current 785nm and 532nm configurations. Shifting the excitation wavelength into the NIR by 45nm greatly reduces fluorescence effects, allowing for the analysis of a wider range of biological and chemical materials. All i-Raman® systems now also feature deeper TE Cooling, which allows the maximum effective integration to be doubled to 4 minutes. This makes the i-Raman® ideal for demanding applications involving low concentrations and weak Raman scatterers.

As part of an evolving product roadmap, B&W Tek has also released the BWIQ™ chemometrics software package for use with the i-Raman® and other high resolution Raman products. BWIQ™ is a multivariate analysis software package that analyzes spectral data to discover internal relationships between spectra and response data and/or spectra and sample classes. BWIQ™ combines traditional chemometric methods such as Partial Least Squares Regression (PLSR) and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) with new methods, such as B&W Tek’s proprietary adaptive iteratively reweighted Penalized Least Squares (airPLS) algorithm for automatic baseline correction and Support Vector Machine (SVM) algorithms for non-linear datasets.

“BWIQ™, paired with the enhancements to the i-Raman®, represents the next step in B&W Tek’s strategy to enhance our leadership position in integrated solutions including high resolution portable Raman instruments,” says Dr. Mike Kayat, VP of Sales & Marketing for B&W Tek, Inc. “By coupling new and transitional chemometric methods with cutting edge computer science technology, such as sparse linear algebra algorithms, BWIQ™ represents the next generation in speed, accuracy, and performance.”

The BWIQ™ package is available as an option with new Raman systems or separately for existing B&W Tek customers.

For more information on the i-Raman® high resolution TE cooled Raman spectrometer and BWIQ™ chemometric software package, visit http://www.bwtek.com/iraman