Surface-Enhanced Hyper-Raman Spectroscopy

Abstract

Abstract Hyper-Raman scattering (HRS), first theoretically predicted by Decius and Rauch in 1959 [l] and experimentally demonstrated by Terhune et al. in 1965 [2], is a nonlinear optical process involving two incident photons (ω0) and one emitted photon (ω). The emitted hyper- Raman photon frequencies are Raman-shifted relative to the second harmonic frequency (2ω0) of the incident laser radiation [3–6]. The energy difference (2ω0 – w) corresponds to one of the characteristicvibrational frequencies of the scattering medium or molecule. In Fig. 1 is given a schematic illustration of resonant and nonresonant HRS. The primary advantage of this nonlinear optical technique lies in its more relaxed selection rules compared with IR and Raman [7,8]. AlllR-active vibrational modes are hyper-Raman allowed, and those modes inactive in both IR and Raman (i.e., the “silent” modes) may be active in hyper-Raman scattering.