…of a recent paper from the RSC’s Analyst, followed by the tagline ‘tuppence-based SERS for the detection of illicit materials’.
In the paper, scientists from Manchester explain how they used a UK two pence piece (a.k.a. tuppence) to do some drug detection work!
Royston Goodacre and team from University of Manchester altered the surface of a copper two pence piece with silver to make it suitable for the vibrational spectroscopic technique surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS), which they then used to differentiate between the drugs: 4-methylmethcathinone (mephedrone), 5,6-methylenedioxy-2-aminoindane (MDAI) and 3,4-methylenedioxy-N-methylamphetamine (MDMA).
To read the full article please visit Chemistry World
2p or not 2p: Tuppence-based SERS for the detection of illicit materials
Samuel Mabbott, Axel Eckmann, Cinzia Casiraghi and Royston Goodacre
Analyst, 2012, Accepted Manuscript
DOI: 10.1039/C2AN35974J, Paper
