A new technology revolutionising advanced chemical imaging, making it millions of times quicker, has won a major international award in Raman spectroscopy.
Enabling up to a million times quicker measurements than the traditional Raman approach makes this technology ready for widespread applications. For example, in biopsies, this could provide quick, cheap tumour identification.
Professor Andrea C. Ferrari
Andrea C. Ferrari, co-founder and scientific adviser at Cambridge Raman Imaging Ltd. (CRIL), and Professor of Nanotechnology at the University of Cambridge, has received the Raman Award, together with Professor Giulio Cerullo from Politecnico di Milano, for the Most Innovative Technological Development at the 29th International Conference on Raman Spectroscopy (ICORS 2026). ICORS is the world’s leading conference in Raman spectroscopy and this award is assigned once every two years to the top global innovation in the field.
The award recognises the development of a new class of synchronised fibre lasers, exploiting graphene and other related materials, to be used for stimulated Raman scattering (SRS). This innovation unlocks practical applications in healthcare, medicine, food packaging, semiconductors, batteries and environmental monitoring.
A technology with potential across healthcare and industry
The technology is now commercialised by CRIL, with several systems already installed in hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, research centres and universities worldwide.
This award-winning approach demonstrates how fundamental advances in graphene and related materials, combined with quantum coherence, can be translated into practical tools with potential impact across healthcare, manufacturing, pharmaceuticals and environmental science.
Professor Ferrari said: “Enabling up to a million times quicker measurements than the traditional Raman approach makes this technology ready for widespread applications. For example, in biopsies, this could provide quick, cheap tumour identification, overcoming the drawbacks of current approaches based on H&E staining (a common lab method that uses two dyes to visualise cellular and tissue architecture), with a massive benefit for society.”
Professor Cerullo added: “This award is a great honour and recognises our efforts not only to develop innovative technologies, but also to translate them into real-world applications. I look forward to seeing this innovation enter the medical diagnostics workflow and improve precision and patient outcomes.”
A compact route to faster chemical imaging
Raman spectroscopy can reveal the chemical composition of a material without the need for labelling, making it valuable for studying everything from biological tissue to advanced materials. The year 2028, will mark the 100th anniversary of the original work of C.V. Raman, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1930 for this work.
Nowadays, Raman spectroscopy is utilised anywhere from research to industry, to study and monitor the properties of materials. However, it is inherently slow. For example, it would take almost 120 days to record a map of a 1 square centimetre tissue biopsy. In 1965, researchers of the Ford Motor Company devised a system in principle able to speed up this process. However, this was so complex to use, that it found no practical application.
Professors Ferrari and Cerullo developed, patented and commercialised a fibre-based laser architecture that delivers the precise spectral bandwidth and synchronisation needed for stimulated Raman microscopy, while remaining stable and alignment-free.
Combined with a 100-channel high-frequency detection system, the technology has enabled a compact all-fibre broadband SRS microscope, capable of producing detailed chemical maps of cells and tissues up to 1 million times quicker than the approach devised by Raman in 1928.
This has resulted in a paradigm shift in the technology, opening up a variety of large-scale and industrial applications, otherwise completely impractical with the standard technology. These encompass biomedical imaging, digital pathology, pharmaceutical analysis, environmental monitoring of microplastics, in line monitoring of semiconductor manufacturing, battery degradation and performance assessment, and many more.
- Read more on the technology in an exclusive interview given by Professor Cerullo earlier this year.
Adapted from a news article originally published on the Cambridge Graphene Centre website – written by Karen Steward.
