Intensity Raman spectroscopy

Tang J and Albrecht A C 1970 Developments in the theories of vibrational Raman intensities Raman Spectroscopy Theory and Practice vol 2, ed H A Szymanski (New York Plenum) pp 33-68... 

In fact, Raman spectrum is a plot of the intensity of Raman scattered radiation as a function of its frequency difference from the incident radiation, usually in units of wavenumbers, cm. This difference is called the Raman shift. It is to be noted that, because it is a difference value, the Raman shift is independent of the frequency of the incident radiation. Typically, only the Stokes region is used because the anti-Stokes spectrum is identical in pattern, but it is much less intense. Raman spectroscopy has been found very useful for chemical analysis because of the following reasons it exhibits high specificity, it is compatible with aqueous systems, no special preparation of the sample is needed and the timescale of the experiment is short. 

Due to the very high intensity of the laser beams and their coherent nature they may be used in a variety of ways where controlled energy is required. Lasers are used commercially for excitation with a specific energy, e.g. in Raman spectroscopy or isotope separation. 

SERS Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy [214-217] Same as RS but with roughened metal (usually silver) substrate Greatly enhanced intensity... 

SERS. A phenomenon that certainly involves the adsorbent-adsorbate interaction is that of surface-enhanced resonance Raman spectroscopy, or SERS. The basic observation is that for pyridine adsorbed on surface-roughened silver, there is an amazing enhancement of the resonance Raman intensity (see Refs. 124—128). More recent work has involved other adsorbates and colloidal... 

Wliat does one actually observe in the experunental spectrum, when the levels are characterized by the set of quantum numbers n. Mj ) for the nonnal modes The most obvious spectral observation is simply the set of energies of the levels another important observable quantity is the intensities. The latter depend very sensitively on the type of probe of the molecule used to obtain the spectmm for example, the intensities in absorption spectroscopy are in general far different from those in Raman spectroscopy. From now on we will focus on the energy levels of the spectmm, although the intensities most certainly carry much additional infonnation about the molecule, and are extremely interesting from the point of view of theoretical dynamics. 

Because of the two frequencies, Wj and Wg, that enter into the Raman spectrum, Raman spectroscopy may be thought of as a two-dimensional fomi of spectroscopy. Nomially, one fixes oij and looks at the intensity as a frmction of tOj, however, one may vary tOj and probe the intensity as a frmction of tOj - tOg. This is called a Raman excitation profile. 

Myers A B and Mathies R A 1987 Resonance Raman intensities A probe of excited-state structure and dynamics Biological Applications of Raman Spectroscopy yo 2, ed T G Spiro (New York Wiley-Interscience) pp 1-58... 

Figure Bl.22.6. Raman spectra in the C-H stretching region from 2-butanol (left frame) and 2-butanethiol (right), each either as bulk liquid (top traces) or adsorbed on a rough silver electrode surface (bottom). An analysis of the relative intensities of the different vibrational modes led to tire proposed adsorption structures depicted in the corresponding panels [53], This example illustrates the usefiilness of Raman spectroscopy for the detennination of adsorption geometries, but also points to its main limitation, namely the need to use rough silver surfaces to achieve adequate signal-to-noise levels.

Raman spectroscopy requires an intense, monocliromatic light source. The field thus developed rapidly when lasers... 

The incident radiation should be highly monochromatic for the Raman effect to be observed clearly and, because Raman scattering is so weak, it should be very intense. This is particularly important when, as in rotational Raman spectroscopy, the sample is in the gas phase. 

Lasers (see Chapter 9) are sources of intense, monochromatic radiation which are ideal for Raman spectroscopy and have entirely replaced atomic emission sources. They are more convenient to use, have higher intensity and are more highly monochromatic for example, the line width at half-intensity of 632.8 nm (red) radiation from a helium-neon laser can be less than 0.05 cm. ... 

In FT-Raman spectroscopy the radiation emerging from the sample contains not only the Raman scattering but also the extremely intense laser radiation used to produce it. If this were allowed to contribute to the interferogram, before Fourier transformation, the corresponding cosine wave would overwhelm those due to the Raman scattering. To avoid this, a sharp cut-off (interference) filter is inserted after the sample cell to remove 1064 nm (and lower wavelength) radiation. 

Equations (6.5) and (6.12) contain terms in x to the second and higher powers. If the expressions for the dipole moment /i and the polarizability a were linear in x, then /i and ot would be said to vary harmonically with x. The effect of higher terms is known as anharmonicity and, because this particular kind of anharmonicity is concerned with electrical properties of a molecule, it is referred to as electrical anharmonicity. One effect of it is to cause the vibrational selection mle Au = 1 in infrared and Raman spectroscopy to be modified to Au = 1, 2, 3,. However, since electrical anharmonicity is usually small, the effect is to make only a very small contribution to the intensities of Av = 2, 3,. .. transitions, which are known as vibrational overtones. 

Experimental values of AG ii2 for high values of v are not normally obtainable from infrared or Raman spectroscopy because of the low intensities of Av = 2, 3,... 

Raman scattering is normally of such very low intensity that gas phase Raman spectroscopy is one of the more difficult techniques. This is particularly the case for vibration-rotation Raman spectroscopy since scattering involving vibrational transitions is much weaker than that involving rotational transitions, which were described in Sections 5.3.3 and 5.3.5. For this reason we shall consider here only the more easily studied infrared vibration-rotation spectroscopy which must also be investigated in the gas phase (or in a supersonic jet, see Section 9.3.8). 

From 1960 onwards, fhe increasing availabilify of intense, monochromatic laser sources provided a fremendous impetus to a wide range of spectroscopic investigations. The most immediately obvious application of early, essentially non-tunable, lasers was to all types of Raman spectroscopy in the gas, liquid or solid phase. The experimental techniques. 

Resonance Raman Spectroscopy. If the excitation wavelength is chosen to correspond to an absorption maximum of the species being studied, a 10 —10 enhancement of the Raman scatter of the chromophore is observed. This effect is called resonance enhancement or resonance Raman (RR) spectroscopy. There are several mechanisms to explain this phenomenon, the most common of which is Franck-Condon enhancement. In this case, a band intensity is enhanced if some component of the vibrational motion is along one of the directions in which the molecule expands in the electronic excited state. The intensity is roughly proportional to the distortion of the molecule along this axis. RR spectroscopy has been an important biochemical tool, and it may have industrial uses in some areas of pigment chemistry. Two biological appHcations include the deterrnination of helix transitions of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) (18), and the elucidation of several peptide stmctures (19). A review of topics in this area has been pubHshed (20). 

Raman Spectroscopy. Raman spectroscopy is an excellent method for the analysis of deuterium containing mixtures, particularly for any of the diatomic H—D—T molecules. For these, it is possible to predict absolute light scattering intensities for the rotational Raman lines. Hence, absolute analyses are possible, at least in principle. The scattering intensities for the diatomic hydrogen isotope species is comparable to that of dinitrogen, N2, and thus easily observed. 

Intensity enhancement takes place on rough silver surfaces. Under such conditions, Raman scattering can be measured from monolayers of molecular substances adsorbed on the silver (pyridine was the original test case), a technique known as surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy. More recendy it has been found that sur-fiice enhancement also occurs when a thin layer of silver is sputtered onto a solid sample and the Raman scattering is observed through the silver. 

Because the Raman cross-section of molecules is usually low, intense light sources and low-noise detectors must be used, and high sensitivities - as required for surface analysis - are difficult to achieve. Different approaches, singly and in combination, enable the detection of Raman spectroscopy bands from surfaces. 

---