Vibrational Spectroscopy: Now in 3-D

A team at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign has developed a multispectral, time-correlated vibrational spectroscopy technique that promises to advance chemistry and nanotechnology. The technique, which will be described in the Journal of Physical Chemistry, enables researchers to monitor the dynamic properties of a sample in real time on femtosecond time scales.

The researchers have applied the technique to water and methyl alcohol. They excited the samples with a tunable ultrashort-pulse laser at different wavelengths in the mid-IR and collected series of time-dependent Raman spectra. They noted that excitation depends on where a pulse is applied to a sample, contrary to the findings of earlier studies by other teams.