I'm going to be doing a significant amount of Raman spectroscopy and my department does not provide shared references, hence I've had to buy my own.
Does anyone have any tips for it? Such as best way of cutting the wafer, ideal size of the wafer, best way of adhering the wafer to the slide.
Thanks in advance
Hi Mark,
In our lab, we use a piece of silicon that is approximately 10 mm x 10 mm. This proved to be a suitable size for micro as well as macro Raman setups. The silicon piece can easily be mounted to a slide or adapter plate using double-sided sticky tape. Care should however be taken during handling of the silicon as it is quite brittle.
As another reference material, I would also suggest to have a piece of polystyrene ready. This can simply be obtained by means of a transparent plastic ruler. The known Raman signal positions (620, 794, 999, 1154, 1447 and 1600 cm-1) of polystyrene can then be used to check the wavenumber calibration of the Raman instrument. One thing to note is that some plastic rulers do not show the Raman signal at 794 cm-1 so it may be worth getting more than one ruler and then to select the "good" material based on the Raman spectrum.
Best regards,
Kay
Kay Sowoidnich do you have any particular tools to cut the wafer down to size? I've heard of people using either some glass cutters or some diamond tipped blade/point. Thanks for your advice! It's a big help
A diamond point cutter should definitely do it. If you have a (100) oriented wafer, make a cut parallel or perpendicular to the flat and press on the edge. The wafer should then shatter along the crystal axis following your cut. For other orientations like (111), that's more complicated, so stick with (100).