Vibrational spectroscopy in analysis of pharmaceuticals: Critical review of innovative portable and handheld NIR and Raman spectrophotometers

The fast pace of changes occurring in the pharmaceutical world emphasizes the need for powerful technologies that allow checking the quality of pharmaceutical products. Infrared and Raman spectroscopies have shown great potentialities for drug analysis in the last decades and consequently caught the attention of the scientific world as well as of industrial developers, leading to major technological advancements. These fast, eco-friendly, and non-destructive techniques help gather essential information about the samples under examination with consistent advantages. This review focuses on the application of portable/handheld NIR and Raman spectrophotometers in the analysis of pharmaceutical products for both in-process and quality control tests. Moreover, analytical methods developed by several authors are described in order to illustrate the applications explored until now. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.