Analysis of carbon-based nanomaterials using Raman spectroscopy: principles and case studies

The advent of new instrumentation techniques provides the breakthrough for Raman spectroscopy to establish as powerful non-invasive method for material characterization. In recent years, carbon-based materials and particularly nanomaterials emerged as the subject of enormous scientific and technological attention due to their outstanding mechanical, electrical and thermal properties. We present a brief account on the unprecedented opportunity of Raman spectroscopy for insight into the behaviour of electrons and phonons in carbon nanomaterials. Raman scattering techniques have been highlighted which can be exclusively used to understand the critical dependence of the ratio of sp2 (graphite-like) to sp3 (diamond-like) bonds with the physical properties of honeycomb carbon lattice. The different case studies carried out in our laboratory were included to underline the fact that the Raman is the backbone of non-destructive, fast and high-resolution characterization tool to provide the maximum structural features, lattice dynamics and electronic information in carbon materials at various length scales.