From Sophisticated Analysis to Colorimetric Determination: Smartphone Spectrometers and Colorimetry

Abstract

Smartphone-based spectrometer and colorimetry have been gaining relevance due to the widespread advances of devices with increasing computational power, their relatively low cost and portable designs with user-friendly interfaces, and their compatibility with data acquisition and processing for “lab-on-a-chip” systems. They find applications in interdisciplinary fields, including but not limited to medical science, water monitoring, agriculture, and chemical and biological sensing. However, spectrometer and colorimetry designs are challenging tasks in real-life scenarios as several distinctive issues influence the quantitative evaluation process, such as ambient light conditions and device independence. Several approaches have been proposed to overcome the aforementioned challenges and to enhance the performance of smartphone-based colorimetric analysis. This chapter aims at providing researchers with a state-of-the-art overview of smartphone-based spectrometer and colorimetry, which includes hardware designs with 3D printers and sensors and software designs with image processing algorithms and smartphone applications. In addition, assay preparation to mimic the real-life testing environments and performance metrics for quantitative evaluation of proposed designs are presented with the list of new and future trends in this field.