Raman spectroscopy polarized measurements

Polarized Raman spectroscopy of HOD films was also studied in Refs. [228, 351, 352]. The HOD film was grown by the three-step process under conditions listed in Table H.3 [351]. The angular dependence of polarized Raman spectroscopy was measured for both the 1332-cm line of the diamond film of 40-pm thickness and the 515-cm line of the Si(lOO) substrate. The results are shown in Figure 11.43. 

Polarization effects are another feature of Raman spectroscopy that improves the assignment of bands and enables the determination of molecular orientation. Analysis of the polarized and non-polarized bands of isotropic phases enables determination of the symmetry of the respective vibrations. For aligned molecules in crystals or at surfaces it is possible to measure the dependence of up to six independent Raman spectra on the polarization and direction of propagation of incident and scattered light relative to the molecular or crystal axes. 

The theory of orientation measurements by linearly polarized Raman spectroscopy has been developed in detail by Bower in 1972 [44]. The Raman intensity, I, is given by... 

The differences in selection rules between Raman and infrared spectroscopy define the ideal situations for each. Raman spectroscopy performs well on compounds with double or triple bonds, different isomers, sulfur-containing and symmetric species. The Raman spectrum of water is extremely weak so direct measurements of aqueous systems are easy to do. Polar solvents also typically have weak Raman spectra, enabling direct measurement of samples in these solvents. Some rough rules to predict the relative strength of Raman intensity from certain vibrations are [7] ... 

Saito, Y., Hayazawa, N., Kataura, H., Tsukagoshi, K., Inouye, Y., and Kawata, S. 2005. Polarization measurements in tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy applied to single-walled carbon nanotubes. Chem. Phys. Lett. 410 136-41. 

Dramatic improvements in instrumentation (lasers, detectors, optics, computers, and so on) have during recent years raised the Raman spectroscopy technique to a level where it can be used for species specific quantitative chemical analysis. Although not as sensitive as, for example IR absorption, the Raman technique has the advantage that it can directly measure samples inside ampoules and other kinds of closed vials because of the transparency of many window materials. Furthermore, with the use of polarization techniques, one can derive molecular information that cannot be obtained from IR spectra. Good starting references dealing with Raman spectroscopy instruments and lasers are perhaps [34-38]. 

An alternative experiment that measures the same vibrational fundamentals subject to different selection rules is Raman spectroscopy. Raman intensities, however, are more difficult to compute than IR intensities, as a mixed third derivative is required to approximate the change in the molecular polarizability with respect to the vibration that is measured by the experiment. The sensitivity of Raman intensities to basis set and correlation is even larger than it is for IR intensities. However, Halls, Velkovski, and Schlegel (2001) have reported good results from use of the large polarized valence-triple-f basis set of Sadlej (1992) and... 

When an electron is injected into a polar solvent such as water or alcohols, the electron is solvated and forms so-called the solvated electron. This solvated electron is considered the most basic anionic species in solutions and it has been extensively studied by variety of experimental and theoretical methods. Especially, the solvated electron in water (the hydrated electron) has been attracting much interest in wide fields because of its fundamental importance. It is well-known that the solvated electron in water exhibits a very broad absorption band peaked around 720 nm. This broad absorption is mainly attributed to the s- p transition of the electron in a solvent cavity. Recently, we measured picosecond time-resolved Raman scattering from water under the resonance condition with the s- p transition of the solvated electron, and found that strong transient Raman bands appeared in accordance with the generation of the solvated electron [1]. It was concluded that the observed transient Raman scattering was due to the water molecules that directly interact with the electron in the first solvation shell. Similar results were also obtained by a nanosecond Raman study [2]. This finding implies that we are now able to study the solvated electron by using vibrational spectroscopy. In this paper, we describe new information about the ultrafast dynamics of the solvated electron in water, which are obtained by time-resolved resonance Raman spectroscopy. 

A remedy obviously should be available using polarization tricks. In conventional Raman spectroscopy, the isotropic and anisotropic components are deduced from linear combinations of the polarized and depolarized spectra, while a nonresonant part is not clearly recognized (41). In frequency-domain CARS it is known how to suppress the nonresonant contribution and solely measure resonant scattering (isotropic plus anisotropic part) (42). In time-domain CARS, polarization interference can do an even better job with three magic cases (derived in Refs. 35,39). These authors derived explicit expressions for the coupling factors F in Equations (2)-(4) ... 

Scattering and other forms of spectroscopy Rely on the fact that electromagnetic radiation has other interactions with matter beyond that of simple absorption and emission. These interactions generate other measurable quantities such as scattering of polarized light (e.g. circular dichroism), and changes of spectral features of chemical bonds (e.g. Raman spectroscopy). 

Nafie (1992) has given a review about the latest VOA instrumentation. Until 1988, the only measured form of ROA was incident circular polarisation (ICP) ROA, but as the process observed in Raman spectroscopy is a two-photon process, there are four possibilities for measuring Raman optical activity. ICP ROA is the unpolarized measurement of the Raman radiation emitted upon excitation with alternating right and left circularly polarized light. It is shown in Fig. 6.3-12, following the sketches of Nafie. As the first of the other possibilities scattered circular polarisation (SCP) ROA was measured. This... 

Infrared dichroism is one of numerous methods used to characterize molecular orientation. The degree of anisotropy of the strained pol3rmers may also be accurately characterized by other techniques such as X-ray diffraction, birefringence, sonic modulus, polarized fluorescence and polarized Raman spectroscopy [2]. These techniques directly probe the orientational behavior of macromolecular chains at a molecular level, in contrast to the macroscopic information provided by mechanical measurements. 

---