Abstract
Drop Coating Deposition Raman (DCDR) method is based on the deposition of a droplet (several microliters) of a solution or suspension on a hydrophobic substrate. Evaporation of the droplet often leads to the formation of a ring pattern known as "coffee ring" effect.
The final shape of the deposit, from which Raman spectra are acquired, is influenced by the properties of the substrate (hydrophobicity, roughness) and sample (volume, concentration). DCDR technique enables to measure the samples of solutions at low initial concentrations and small volumes as well.
In our research, we focus our attention on two different samples - suspensions of liposomes and solutions of contaminants. As for liposomes, we studied a drying process on non-commercial hydrophobic substrates with different roughness.
We showed that for liposomes, increasing roughness of the substrate leads to better preconcentration of initial suspension, thus to the higher intensity of the Raman spectra. Focusing on contaminants, we are trying to find DCDR detection limits using a smooth commercial hydrophobic substrate SpectRIMTM (Tienta Sciences).