The Renishaw Raman Spectrometer offers a quick and simple method for analysing a wide range of materials. Raman spectroscopy is widely used to yield information about the bonding and symmetry of a molecule. Each bond can potentially interact with the incident probe laser wavelength and the resulting scattering gives rise to characteristic spectral peaks. Each vibration is affected by the mass of the atoms, surrounding functional groups, bond strength etc. and therefore Raman spectra provides valuable information about the elemental composition and structure of a sample. 

The decrease (Stokes) or increase (Antistokes) in energy of the scattered photon relative to the incident photon corresponds to the difference in vibrational energy level within the ground electronic state of the molecule. The vibrational energy is typically measured in wavenumbers (cm ^-1) and spectra are plotted against intensity.

Technical Specifications

Workstations

• InVia microscope - Enclosure with stage
• Free-space microscope - facilitates larger samples/heating stages etc. Also attachable is an extendable arm out to the laser ablation stage
• Fibre-probe microscope - Hand held microscope. Point-and-click spectra

Lasers

• 514 nm (Argon Ion)
• 785 nm 

Samples

• Solids, liquids or gases
• Any size

Cameras

• RenCam CCD camera (standard use)
• Andor Solis Intensified CCD (optical gate 0.25ns)

Additional capabilities

• Polariser & half-wave plate
• Confocal microscope
• Line & mapping spectra

Software

• Wire 3.1 user friendly software
• Post processing and analysis

Renishaw Raman Spectrometer in the NCLA

Spectra of Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy by gold nanoparticles. Dye molecule gives no spectral peaks unless gold nanoparticles present. Larger nanoparticles, greater SERS enhancement. 

Spectra used to identify chemical changes in polymeric structure due to laser ablation.