WITec Paper Awards 2025: Battery, biomedical and crystal research recognised

Oxford Instruments has announced the winners of the WITec Paper Award 2025, celebrating outstanding scientific publications that showcase the power and versatility of Raman microscopy. This year’s awards highlight innovative research from Germany and Poland, demonstrating how Raman imaging continues to unlock new possibilities in material science, energy storage, and biomedical diagnostics.

Taking the Gold Award, ‘In operando 3D mapping of elastic deformation fields in crystalline solids’, Shahrouz Amini and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam developed a novel technique to observe how crystalline solids respond to pressure in real time. Their method, called 3D-RISM, combines confocal Raman microscopy with nanoindentation to create in operando 3D maps of elastic deformation fields - capturing subsurface strain behaviour with unprecedented clarity. Applied to calcite-based materials, the technique revealed how these fields evolve and eventually transition into inelastic deformations. The researchers see 3D-RISM as a valuable tool for studying the mechanical performance of complex and hybrid materials at the microscale.

The Silver Award, ‘Elucidating the nature of secondary phases in LiNi₀.₅Mn₁.₅O₄ cathode materials using correlative Raman-SEM microscopy’, went to Umair Nisar and his team at the Centre for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden-Württemberg (ZSW) for their work on lithium-ion battery cathodes. Focusing on LiNi₀.₅Mn₁.₅O₄ (LNMO), a cobalt-free cathode material, the group used correlative Raman and SEM microscopy to investigate the secondary phases that form during high-temperature synthesis. While standard characterisation methods like XRD struggled to resolve these phases, Raman imaging enabled the detection of three distinct secondary phases - identified for the first time in LNMO calcined at 1000°C. Their findings revealed a link between these unwanted phases and reduced discharge capacity, providing critical insight for improving next-generation battery materials.

Meanwhile, the Bronze Award, ‘Advancing triage of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia subtypes diagnosis: label-free Raman spectroscopy for precise single-cell phenotyping and subtype classification’, recognised Patrycja Leszczenko and colleagues from Jagiellonian University in Krakow for their work in leukaemia diagnostics. Their study explored how label-free Raman spectroscopy, combined with statistical methods such as PCA and PLS-DA, could distinguish between healthy and malignant cells in cases of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL). The technique proved capable of differentiating B-cell and T-cell subtypes at the single-cell level, even across varied sample preparation methods. The team believes this approach could offer a faster, more reliable alternative to conventional diagnostic workflows - bringing personalised treatment closer to reality for ALL patients.

Submissions for the WITec Paper Award 2026 are now open. Researchers are invited to submit peer-reviewed papers published in 2025 that include results obtained using a WITec microscope. Entries should be submitted by 31 January 2026. 

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