Design and applications of miniaturized, portable LED based colorimeter

Tomas Drevinskas; Audrius Maruška; Eimantas Gladkauskas; Laimutis Telksnys; Valdas Girdauskas; Jelena Gorbatsova; Mihkel Kaljurand; Ona Ragažinskienė

doi:10.6001/chemija.v29i4.3836

Tomas Drevinskas
Audrius Maruška
Eimantas Gladkauskas
Laimutis Telksnys
Valdas Girdauskas
Jelena Gorbatsova
Mihkel Kaljurand
Ona Ragažinskienė

DOI: https://doi.org/10.6001/chemija.v29i4.3836

Keywords: colorimetry, portable, LED, total phenolic compound content, total flavonoid content, radical scavenging activity

Abstract

Portable and autonomous analytical instrumentation is becoming more important. Portable instrumentation can be designed via the miniaturization approach and this is a challenging task due to: (i) the limited battery power supply, (ii) a low number of mechanical and moving parts allowed in the design and (iii) susceptibility to changing environment and temperature fluctuations. In this work we describe the design of a light emitting diode (LED) based 3D printed miniaturized colorimeter (dimensions: 5 cm × 4 cm × 4.5 cm (length, width, height), weight less than 56 g). The colorimeter was optimized for determination of the total phenolic compound content, the total flavonoid content and radical scavenging activity. The designed instrument provides comparable results to those of a conventional desktop spectrophotometer existing on the market. The designed LED based miniaturized colorimeter has wireless communication capability. This work demonstrates that this instrument can be applied investigating real samples.