A Comparison of the Raman Spectral Information from Toluene and Cyclohexane Using Different Fourier Transform (FT)-Raman Devices
V. Ortega Clavero, N. Javahiraly, Andreas Weber, W. Schröder and P. Meyrueis
The Raman spectra from the chemical compounds toluene and cyclohexane obtained using a Fourier Transform (FT)-Raman spectrometer prototype have been contrasted with the Raman spectra of these same materials collected with two different commercial FT-Raman devices. The FT-Raman spectrometer consist of a Michelson interferometer, a self-designed photon counter and a reference photo-detector. The evaluation methodology of the spectral information, contrary to the commercial devices that commonly use the zero-crossing method, is carried out by re-sampling the Raman scattering and by accurately extracting the optical path information of the Michelson interferometer. The FTRaman arrangement has been built using conventional parts without disregarding the spectral frequency precision that usually such a FTRaman instruments deliver. No additional complex hardware components or costly software modules have been included in this FT-Raman device. The main Raman lines from the spectra obtained with the three FT-Raman devices have been compared with the Raman lines from the standard Raman spectra of these two materials. The values obtained using the FT-Raman spectrometer prototype have shown a frequency accuracy comparable to that obtained with the commercial devices without facing the need for a large investment. Although the proposed FT-Raman prototype cannot be directly compared to the last generation of FT-Raman spectrometers from the commercial manufacturers, such a device could give an opportunity to users that require high frequency precision in their spectral analysis and are provided with rather scarce resources.
Keywords: Optical metrology, FT-Raman spectroscopy, toluene, cyclohexane, HeNe laser