Abstract
Raman tweezers allow us to trap and analyze nanoparticles generated during tire abrasion and brake pad friction.
Highlights
We introduce Raman tweezers (RTs), a combination of optical tweezers and Raman spectroscopy, for the analysis of tires and road wear micro and nano particles dispersed in water
We have used Raman tweezers to trap and analyze tire and road wear particles with dimensions from few microns down to the 500 nm range. We show both theoretically and experimentally, that the strong radiation pressure observed on such absorbing particles prevents stable trapping in 3D, but that 2D trapping can be accomplished by pushing the particles against the top surface of the glass cell in which they are contained
Strong light focusing on a single car tire particle generates bubbling and can even induce changes in its crystalline structure
Summary
TWRPs are often transported to the fresh aquatic system via road runoff, and from there to estuaries and oceans.[7,8]. Raman spectroscopy[28,29] is a vibrational spectroscopy allowing one to chemical identify materials based on the unique energy spectrum of the atomic nuclei vibrations in molecular compounds (the so called vibrational fingerprint) It is a non-invasive and non-destructive optical technique enabling analysis and imaging of the materials composition, structural, electronic and chemical properties of micro and nanoparticles on spatial scales generally limited by diffraction to ∼250 nm in the visible range, but that can be pushed to the nanometer and even the sub-nanometer scale using near-field optical microscopy techniques.[30,31,32,33] Raman can provide information on the presence of carbonaceous species (carbon black, graphitic particles), minerals and metal oxides. Thanks to the presence of spectral features attributable to dust or magnetite, in addition to the Raman bands of carbon, we show the possibility to distinguish TPs from BWPs on particles featuring micron and submicrometric dimensions
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