Raman Characterization of polycrystalline barium hexaferrite nanoparticles: SERS of nanoparticles in powder form

Abstract

Raman Characterization of Materials in powder form has always remained challenging because of low signal to noise ratio. We, herein, propose a method to make use of Surface Enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS) technique to improve the usefulness of Raman study of powder samples containing particles of sub wavelength size. As a case study, we have successfully applied the method to barium hexaferrite (BHF) synthesized by the modified citrate sol-gel method. The crystal structure and surface morphology of the prepared BHF powder were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy. As many as 19 Raman peaks in a single spectrum with unpolarized laser were observed in the present work, against the commonly observed (in literature) 10–12 peaks for BHF. This report, as it is believed, will enable the research community to probe further into the distortions in crystal structure through Raman studies.