A new multimodal platform for vibrational spectroscopy, developed jointly by the Politecnico di Milano and Specto Photonics in collaboration with international partners, has been published in the journal Nature Communications.
The way light interacts with matter can reveal an extraordinary amount of information about the materials around us: from chemical composition to molecular structure, right through to their mechanical properties. However, obtaining all this information simultaneously poses a challenge, as different spectroscopic techniques generally analyse different regions of the vibrational spectrum and require separate measurements.
A new study, published in the journal Nature Communications, presents a multimodal optical platform capable of acquiring, in a single measurement, complementary information obtained via Brillouin spectroscopy, ultra-low-frequency Raman spectroscopy and conventional Raman spectroscopy. This approach enables the simultaneous characterisation of the mechanical, structural and chemical properties of materials, with a spatial resolution limited only by light diffraction.
«This approach demonstrates the value of integrating different optical techniques into a single platform», says Dr Giuseppe Antonacci, the study’s coordinator. «It is, in fact, possible to determine the stiffness, molecular orientation and chemical composition of a material simply by illuminating the sample with a laser beam.»
The new platform integrates a birefringence-induced phase-delay filter into the detection system of a confocal microscope; this is a proprietary technology developed and patented by Specto Photonics in collaboration with the Department of Physics at the Politecnico di Milano. This solution effectively suppresses background light and enables the detection of vibrational signals at extremely low frequencies, which are normally difficult to observe using conventional spectroscopic techniques.
In addition to Giuseppe Antonacci, the study group includes Dario Polli and Giulio Cerullo, both physics lecturers.
Publication
Full vibrational spectroscopy for simultaneous mechanical, structural and chemical analysis
Nature Communications