Bioinspired THz applications for chemical analysis and microorganism fingerprinting

This report presents THz spectroscopy as a valuable tool to discover unique signatures in a variety of analytes. Biomolecules and bacterial spores have been demonstrated to have characteristic signatures in the absorption patterns. Examples presented are the absorption band of thymine and the double bands of Bacillus sp. spores. In the case of thymine, the absorption band exactly matched the results of molecular modeling at 1.27 THz. The signatures are associated with collective polar vibrations within the structures of the materials, and can be used for fingerprint type sensing.