A collection of D-galactose, D-glucose, D-maltose, D-mannose, D-sorbitol, fructose, sucrose and inositol samples were used to build a specific library with the Mira Cal software.
Today’s industry, but also daily life, cannot be imagined without sugar. Sugars are used by chemical manufacturers in reactions, by food makers as a flavor and by pharmaceutical drug makers as preservatives, stabilizers, and masking agents for medications. Sugar is a generic term for saccharide and there are three general groups of saccharides: monosaccharides, disaccharides, and polysaccharides. Monosaccharides are the simplest carbohydrate forms and consist of single sugar moieties that become the building blocks for the other saccharide groups. Common monosaccharides are fructose (fruit sugar), glucose (dextrose), galactose (milk sugar).
Disaccharides contain two monosaccharides or twice the sugar moieties. The most common are sucrose (glucose + fructose), lactose (galactose + glucose), and maltose (glucose + glucose). By contrast, polysaccharides are characterized by a repeating pattern of polymerized monosaccharides or disaccharides and result in materials such as cellulose, starches, and glycogen
MIRA
Metrohm’s handheld Raman analyser Mira (with the ORS technique) enables unambiguous identification of the structurally similar sugars through high sensitivity measurements of powder or crystalline samples. Fructose (a ketose) and glucose (an aldose), are both monosaccharides with the same chemical composition.
These two compounds can easily be differentiated with Mira based on the spectral correlation values.
Application Note RS-2
Metrohm’s Application Note RS-2 demonstrates the fast and nondestructive Raman spectroscopic identification of structurally similar sugars such as D-galactose, D-glucose, D-maltose, D-mannose, D-sorbitol, fructose, sucrose and inositol, after building a suitable library. Measurements with the Mira M-1 Raman spectrometer do not require sample preparation and furnish instant results that identify the sugars unambiguously.
