Market Profiles

The advancements of battery and computing technologies have enabled analytical instruments to have smaller form factors that take them beyond portableand into the realm of being handheld.

Metabolomics is one of the newer “omics” fields, and focuses on the characterization of the small molecule metabolites in biological systems. Metabolomics research has the potential to shed light on certain disease states, monitor patient response to treatment, and contribute to drug target discovery. Applications also span pharmaceutical development and neuroscience research.

Measuring moisture at high or trace amounts in is an important parameter of many manufacturing processes including commercial food production, pharmaceutical, and chemical manufacturing or other industrialized fabrication setting.

The market for elemental analyzers embodies three technology categories, consisting of inorganic analyzers, organic analyzers, and total organic carbon and total nitrogen (TOC–TN) instruments.

Nondispersive infrared photometers are relatively simple instruments used to detect gases.

Over the past decade, benchtop nuclear magnetic resonance instruments have been used in the petroleum and petrochemical industries for process control applications.

The use of photodiode-array (PDA) ultraviolet–visible (UV–vis) spectrophotometers is mainly adopted in industrial applications such as pharmaceutical and chemical production, coatings, or food and agriculture processing.

Although weakness in the metals and mining industry has challenged the market for spectroscopy instruments in 2016, the demand for environmental and food testing have been robust, forging growth for key technologies such as ICP and ICP-MS.

Raman spectroscopy is one of the fastest growing segments of the molecular spectroscopy techniques.

Spectroscopy has always been a key sector of the analytical and life science instrumentation industry because of the vastness of applications in just about every industrial sector.

While some atomic spectrometry systems can generally detect and quantify any element in the periodic table, other instruments are specifically designed to measure only one, or at most a few, elements of interest in a particular application.

Although mass spectrometers are more commonly associated with life science applications, there are some mass spectrometry (MS) techniques that are specifically designed for surface science applications.

At the fringe of the infrared spectrum is the terahertz region, which until recently was not significantly utilized for spectroscopy.

Raman spectroscopy has developed into a key analytical tool for the pharmaceutical industry.

Infrared (IR) microscopy includes both conventional microscope systems and more advanced imaging systems, which are used in two ways.

Market Profile: Used IR and NIR Spectroscopy Instrumentation

Market Profile: Biophotometers

Portable molecular spectroscopy techniques used in the pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical industries consist of Raman, infrared (IR), and near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy.

Photodiode-array (PDA) UV–vis spectrophotometers offer an alternative to conventional scanning UV–vis instruments and potentially great benefits to a certain subset of end-users. Although it is not a high growth market, it should remain a sizeable market for many years to come.

Market Profile: Process Raman Spectroscopy

Market Profile: TDLAS Analyzers for Environmental Analysis

Market Profile: On-Line Ultraviolet 254-nm Water Analysis

Market Profile: Laboratory and Portable IR and NIR in Environmental Analyses

Market Profile: Vibrational Spectroscopy and Biofuels Analysis

Triple-quadrupole liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC–MS) is one of the most powerful quantitative analytical techniques available for clinical analyses, with recent improvements making it even more appealing to the clinical market. Waters has an extremely strong foothold in the market, but its competitors appear to be stepping up their efforts in the sector. Demand from the clinical industry is rapidly approaching 10% of the overall market for triple-quadrupole LC–MS.

As with other molecular spectroscopy techniques, demand for microscopy-enabled UV–vis–near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy is a developing segment of the market. Demand from the semiconductor and electronics industry is the primary driver, although there is considerable potential for other applications as well. So far none of the major UV–vis–NIR vendors compete in this niche market, but that could soon change.

The use of Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) and Fourier transform near infrared (FT-NIR) spectrometers now accounts for the majority of demand for mid- and near-infrared instruments, with demand from the petrochemical industry beginning to follow the trend. The major instrument vendors as well as specialist suppliers compete strongly in the petrochemical segment of the market, which accounts for only a small percentage of the overall FT-IR and FT-NIR markets.

Raman spectroscopy is a powerful analytical technique that has rapidly developed from an impractical concept into a powerful handheld technique. The inherent advantages of Raman spectroscopy have led to rapid growth in demand from pharmaceutical and government organizations. As is typical in a fast-growing market, the competitive landscape is very dynamic.

People most often think of gargantuan systems that cost millions of dollars when someone mentions nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy.

One of the driving subsegments of the Raman spectroscopy market is Raman imaging. The speed and chemical information that imaging provides is helping the technique steadily replace conventional Raman microscopy.