Polish academic centers are among the strongest in Central Europe in the field of Raman spectroscopy — spanning solid-state physics, analytical chemistry, biophysics, and clinical diagnostics. Recent months have brought over a dozen significant publications from AGH, Jagiellonian University (including Collegium Medicum), the University of Warsaw, Gdańsk University of Technology, and Warsaw-based centers. At Gekko Photonics, we follow these works for two reasons: many of them define what can be expected from Raman techniques in industrial conditions, and some are developed in direct proximity to our team — we design and manufacture process Raman analyzers in Poland, so contact with the domestic academic community is our daily workshop, not a marketing declaration.

Below, we have compiled the most important threads from recent weeks: what AGH, UJ with UJ CM, UW, PG, and PW are publishing, what trends are visible, and what this means for those responsible for Process analyzers in industry.

Map of Polish centers working with Raman

Activity in the field of Raman spectroscopy in Poland is concentrated around several nodes:

• AGH (Krakow) — Faculty of Physics and Applied Computer Science, including the Atomic and Molecular Biospectroscopy Team and the Department of Silicate and Macromolecular Chemistry; the Biospectroscopy Team utilizes, among others, a confocal Raman microscope with 488 and 532 nm excitation, while the Faculty Laboratory of Phase Research operates a laboratory for infrared and Raman spectroscopy.
• UJ + UJ CM (Krakow) — Smoluchowski Institute of Physics, Faculty of Pharmacy, Jagiellonian University Medical College, a new unit — the Laboratory of Biomedical Applied Spectroscopy (LBSA) — to be launched in 2026.
• UW (Warsaw) — Faculty of Chemistry at UW and its Raman Spectroscopy Research Group, focusing on SERS and plasmonic nanomaterials; calculations are supported by ICM UW.
• PG (Gdansk) — publications in the fields of photonics, topological materials, and SERS for biofluids, available in the repository at pub.pg.edu.pl.
• PW (Warsaw) — Faculty of Chemistry and materials science units; regularly ranked among the strongest chemical teams in national classifications.
• Other centers — Lodz University of Technology (Laboratory of Laser Molecular Spectroscopy), University of Wroclaw, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology — all have visible Raman publications, but are beyond the scope of this review.

AGH — Raman for 2D materials and medicine

The most telling novelty of 2026 from Krakow is a paper in the journal Small (Wiley): „Laser-Induced Structural Transformation in Ti3CNTx MXene Monitored by Raman Spectroscopy with DFT Insight” (DOI: 10.1002/smll.202512104). Authors from AGH conducted a multi-line Raman study of MXene material (Ti3CNTx) synthesized under hydrothermal conditions, using four excitation wavelengths (457, 514.5, 532, and 660 nm) and several laser power levels. They determined power thresholds above which signatures of amorphous carbon, TiO₂ phases, and nitrogen doping appear in the spectrum — i.e., signs of sample degradation. The work was supplemented with DFT calculations for a MXene monolayer functionalized with −OH, −F, and −Cl groups, which organize the assignments of vibrational bands.

What is the practical takeaway? For anyone designing a Raman measurement on a sensitive material — from modern battery electrodes to catalysts — this is a concrete instruction on how to select laser power so that the measurement reveals the sample’s structure rather than products of its photothermal degradation. In an inline reactor implementation, the problem is analogous: excessive power destroys the catalyst or induces secondary reactions under the probe.

Another visible thread from AGH is biospectroscopy in collaboration with UJ and UJ CM — in particular, work on diagnostic markers in serum and bone marrow using Raman, FTIR, and SERS techniques. This direction has, for several years, provided robust chemometric models for biological samples — exactly the type of data that the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industries use for raw material and intermediate validation.

UJ + UJ CM — Raman in clinical diagnostics and biophysics

Krakow is currently one of the strongest European centers applying vibrational spectroscopy in medicine. In April 2026, Professor Marzec’s team began implementing a project funded under the OPUS 29 competition at UJ CM, and a new unit is being launched at the Faculty of Pharmacy: Laboratory of Biomedical Applied Spectroscopy (LBSA), combining Raman with FTIR, AFM, and fluorescence microscopy. The research infrastructure in Kraków is complemented by the facilities of the Jagiellonian Centre for Innovation (Raman microscopes with 532, 633, and 785 nm excitation).

Among the most recent works, a March publication in Vibrational Spectroscopy: „Salivary extracellular vesicles and Raman spectroscopy in precision diagnostics of type 2 diabetes”. is worth noting. The authors demonstrate that SERS enables a label-free molecular „fingerprint” of extracellular vesicles from saliva and multiplex detection of type 2 diabetes biomarkers. From a process analyzer perspective, this work should be read twice: first, as confirmation that Raman/SERS works at very low analyte concentrations in biological matrices; second, as an indication that the standardization of SERS substrates — historically the weakest link of this technique — has finally moved toward the reproducibility required for clinical and industrial QC applications.

Independently of these works, UJ continues to develop TERS (tip-enhanced Raman) — a technique with single-molecule sensitivity — used to study the impact of chromatin structure and DNA conformation on damage induction and repair. This is fundamental research, but it provides a very solid methodological reference for anyone estimating the detection limit of Raman in challenging samples.

UW — SERS and plasmonic materials

The Faculty of Chemistry at UW has maintained a specialized group focused on surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS). for years. Topics of recent months’ publications include new plasmonic substrates (e.g., Au nanostars with an Ag coating featuring tunable plasmonics), electrochemical SERS, and analytical sensors for biomedical and materials applications. Computationally, the team is supported by ICM UW, allowing them to link experimental spectra with DFT modeling and plasmonic field simulations.

From a process perspective, UW serves as a „recipe provider” — how to design a SERS substrate with reproducible enhancement, which factors to control during analyte adsorption, and how to interpret spectral changes at different potentials. These are exactly the questions that arise with us when a client asks about detecting an analyte at the ppm level in a process stream.

PG — photonics, topological materials, and biofluids

In March 2026, Gdańsk University of Technology published a paper in Photonics (MDPI) titled „Laser-Induced Degradation of Bi2Se3 THz Emitters Revealed by Raman Spectroscopy” (Photonics 2026, 13(3), 278). The authors studied passivated Bi₂Se₃ films as terahertz radiation emitters and showed that Raman is an effective tool for mapping laser damage — in areas irradiated with high power density, the Bi₂Se₃ signal disappears, and at the edges of the ablation crater, a dominant mode at ~255 cm⁻¹ appears, characteristic of segregated selenium. This is another work that precisely indicates when Raman serves not only as a compositional analyst but also as a material state diagnostic tool.

A second thread from PG concerns SERS for biofluids: a paper in the university repository describes a simple and inexpensive drop-coating deposition substrate based on silver ink on glass, designed for the analysis of plasma, saliva, and urine. This direction is significant for the development of screening SERS measurements in cosmetics and pharmaceuticals.

PW — materials chemistry and analytics

The Faculty of Chemistry at the Warsaw University of Technology, along with PW’s materials science units, has long published in the areas of nanotechnology, polymer materials, and analytical chemistry, with Raman appearing as a characterization technique alongside XRD, FTIR, and electron microscopy. In the recent period, we do not point to a single „flagship” Raman title as seen at AGH or PG — but PW’s output in designing new functional materials indirectly translates into spectral libraries and reference models for industrial applications. This is also significant in the context of collaboration with industrial clients: engineering and master’s theses involving Raman are regularly produced here.

Three trends in Polish Raman publications of 2026

From reading the last several dozen works from AGH, UJ, UW, PG, PW, and related centers, three directions emerge:

1. Raman + machine learning. CNN classifiers and PCA/PLS hybrids for spectra are now standard tools for Polish teams — the review „Recent Advances in Raman Spectral Classification with Machine Learning” (Sensors MDPI, January 2026) summarizes the state at the beginning of the year and is cited in many domestic projects.
2. Miniaturization and mobility. A new review in Lab on a Chip (February 2026) „Miniaturisation of Raman spectroscopy systems: from benchtop to backpocket” organizes the state of knowledge on portable spectrometers — a direction directly relevant for incoming raw material inspection at the warehouse gate and field measurements.
3. Vibrobiomedicine and health safety. The cycle „Trends in Vibrational Spectroscopy: NIRS and Raman Techniques for Health and Food Safety Control” (Sensors 2026) indicates that national research teams are heavily entering the control of food, cosmetic raw materials, and clinical biomarkers.

What this means for industrial applications

Academia explores sensitive materials (MXene, Bi₂Se₃, biomarkers, extracellular vesicles) and their degradation mechanisms. Industry derives three things from this:

• Operational rules regarding laser power and acquisition time — the AGH work on MXene is a direct instruction on how not to burn the sample during mapping, in relation to batteries, catalysts, and electrodes for hydrogen electrolyzers. An analogous logic applies to polymers that are thermally sensitive and dyed resins in a reactor.
• Diagnostics of material condition, not just composition. The PG work on Bi₂Se₃ shows how Raman reveals the damage threshold contactlessly. In an analogous process, the question is when the probe can still be used and when optical surface degradation or photothermal effects on the sample appear.
• Standardization of SERS as a prerequisite for process implementations in pharmaceuticals and cosmetics — the work of UW and PG on substrates brings this closer to line realities.

A related thread is the first wave of utilization of new lasers and detectors described in our earlier review of novelties — it largely follows the same directions as national academic publications.

Gekko Photonics solutions — from academic publication to reactor

At Gekko Photonics, we bridge the world of academic publications with the realities of a production plant. Specifically:

• From the rules concerning laser power, selected wavelengths, and degradation thresholds, we choose configurations that work safely on industrial samples — and this is the foundation of Spectrally™ X1 INLINE (785 nm laser, 600 mW, 30 mW version for ATEX applications, immersion probe with Retractex module for depositing media).
• Validation of new models and calibration of raw materials is carried out on the Spectrally™ X1 LAB with a 25-sample carousel and through-package analysis — the same stage referred to in the works of UJ CM as a „laboratory benchmark before going to process.”.
• Mobile verification and incoming QC are performed with the Spectrally™ X1 PORTABLE — this is the equivalent of the „from benchtop to backpocket” trend visible in the February review in Lab on a Chip.
• Chemometric models (CNN, PLS, PCA), a library of approximately 28,000 spectra, and drift monitoring are handled by Spectrally™ OS — the software layer common to the entire X1 family, which combines our own data with literature.

When a client comes to us with an application similar to what academia publishes (e.g., SERS in raw material supervision, Raman in batteries, Raman in cosmetic emulsion monitoring) — the first step is a feasibility study on the client’s samples, not a quick equipment offer. This is also the approach of the UJ CM, AGH, and UW teams: first research, then implementation.

Frequently asked questions

Are academic Raman publications relevant for factory implementation at all?

Yes — provided that basic research is separated from applied research. The AGH work on laser power thresholds for MXene, the PG work on Bi₂Se₃ damage, and the UJ CM work on SERS standardization translate directly into engineering decisions in a process analyzer (which wavelength, what power, how long an acquisition time, what substrate). Works on new 2D materials or exotic biomarkers are less directly translatable but provide libraries of reference spectra.

What distinguishes academic Raman from process Raman?

Academia works with low signals, long acquisition times, confocal microscopy, and short samples. Industry requires 24/7 continuity, probe resistance to deposits and thermal shock, integration with DCS/PLC, automatic calibration, and validated chemometric models. These layers are implemented in our systems by process-grade hardware (X1 INLINE) and Spectrally™ OS — but the input data and methodology rest on the shoulders of academic research.

Which Polish centers collaborate most with industry?

All those mentioned (AGH, UJ, UJ CM, UW, PG, PW) conduct projects commissioned by industry or co-financed from public funds (NCBR, NCN OPUS, FENG projects). Collaboration takes the form of research agreements, grant consortia, or implementation doctorate programs. The choice of center is usually dictated by the specific application (chemistry, biomedicine, materials, photonics) and geographic proximity.

Does Gekko Photonics collaborate with Polish universities?

Yes. At Gekko Photonics, we regularly consult configurations of process Raman analyzers with academic teams in Poland, use their reference measurements for building chemometric models, and open access to our platform Spectrally™ OS for R&D projects. As a supplier from Wrocław, we are the most readily available industrial partner for national centers in terms of service, calibration, and equipment customization.

How should I read these publications if I am responsible for PAT in a plant?

Three filters: does the work concern a material or chemistry similar to your process; does it provide operating thresholds (laser power, wavelength, detection limit); does it show validation on heterogeneous samples. If the answer to all three questions is „yes” — it is worth consulting with an analyzer supplier, because it can likely be translated into specific inline settings.

Test measurement and engineering consultation

If any of the described threads correspond to your applications (2D materials and batteries, biofluids and SERS, sensitive polymers, photothermal monitoring, chemometrics with ML) — at Gekko Photonics, we select the configuration of the process Raman analyzer for the specific chemistry and physics of the process. The format of collaboration:

• A 30-minute conversation with an application engineer — review of samples, wavelength, probe, and process requirements.
• A test measurement in our laboratory, typically within 2 weeks from sample delivery — the result is a spectrum + feasibility assessment + a draft chemometric model.
• A feasibility report within 10 business days from the measurement — with specific equipment parameters and model ranges.

Scheduling a meeting: /contact/. All three stages are carried out in Poland, on equipment from the same X1 family that later operates as the inline analyzer at the client’s plant.