An Application of Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering to the Surface Characterization of Carbon Materials

Abstract

Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) has been successfully applied to the surface characterization of carbon materials such as highly oriented pyrolitic graphite, pyrolitic graphite, glassy carbon, diamond, and carbon fibers by the evaporation of Ag island films onto the surface. The surface chemical and morphological structure of carbon materials has been parallelly characterized by electron energy loss spectroscopy, x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and field-emission scanning electron microscope. Raman scattering from the outermost surface of carbon materials is found to be remarkably enhanced by the presence of Ag island films (50–100 Å). The chemical and crystal structure change of graphite and diamond by argon-ion etching has also been studied by the enhanced Raman spectra. The obtained results demonstrate the possibility of using SERS with the Ag overlayer method as a new high-sensitivity surface probe for various kinds of industrial materials.