A microscopia Raman de alta resolução e suas aplicações na ciência dos materiais

Abstract

The quest for miniaturization of the structures has always been a constant effort of science and technology and today engineering can be thought on the atomic scale. Nowadays, the Abbe diffraction limit has been exceeded and superresolutions are achieved by many optical microscopy techniques. The combination of microscopy techniques with vibrational spectroscopy greatly expanded the set of information that can be obtained in a measurement. In this thesis, we work on several materials using confocal Raman microspectroscopy (MRC), but greater attention is given to the study of carbon nanotubes at high resolutions (15-25 nm) using tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (TERS). Using MRC, we studied the penetration of the dye toluidine blue orto (TBO) in decayed human teeth, the distribution of sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) in the hybrid material ORMOSIL and the ferroelastic domains of the vanadates Pb8O5(VO4)2 (PVO) and BiVO4. The penetration of the TBO was studied at different focal planes within the tooth. We spatially mapped a specific Raman band of the dye along the z-axis and this way we estimated its minimum penetration. Next, we investigated the distribution of SDS in ORMOSIL. A characteristic peak of SDS was spatially mapped and led us to the conclusion that the size and distribution of the dopant SDS in ORMOSIL is not uniform. Besides, our results suggested that the inclusion of the SDS in the ORMOSIL membrane is only physical. We observed that the orientational states of the PVO have unique forms and features, and further, in some cases they form right angles with each other. The phase transitions and structural variations of the domains of PVO were spectroscopically mapped. The ferroelastic domains BiVO4 were spectroscopically mapped as well and, in addition, we applied analytical and numerical techniques in order to understand how the transition between adjacent domains happens. Single- and double-walled carbon nanotubes were investigated using TERS. The research on metallic SWNTs was carried out in conjunction with SERS and our results showed clearly the influence of a metal particle on the enhancement of the Raman spectrum. We investigate the effects of C ion irradiations on DWNTs. We observed that the shift of the G band of the C ion implanted DWNT bundle is dependent on the exciting laser energy. We also investigated isolated and small DWNT bundles and several near-field Raman images of the G, G’ and D bands were presented. We also spatially mapped the ID=IG ratio. We found that, regardless of the ion-implantation dose, the generated defects in the DWNTs can be punctual or extended. We analyzed the acquired TER spectra and observed no spectral signature of the induced defects. The variations of the ID=IG was investigated along many isolated DWNTs and, in some case, we noted a very high spatial localization, in the order of our spatial resolution (∼ 15 nm). The nearfield spatial maps of the Raman bands and the ratio ID=IG in the region of the highly localized defects allowed us to suggest a Raman scattering electron-relaxation length much lower than 15-10 nm for the defective region of the carbon nanotube.