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Raman fitting laboratory

Raman spectroscopy is a well known and widely used instrument in a modern material science. But understanding and interpretation of the results remains difficult and time consuming task because of the complex and irregular structure of Raman spectra. Typical Raman spectrum consists of tens overlapping peaks with different amplitude and width and a broad background signal. Processing of these spectra require fitting of shape and position of all the peaks comprising spectrum by analytical functions. Another thing to consider is a proper subtraction of the background signal.

The application we have created allows the researchers to process the Raman spectroscopy results efficiently. We have divided this rather complex task into six simple steps, each of which can be completed in a manner of seconds. Upon loading of a raw data (step 1), the user is free to select what part of spectrum he wants to process (step 2) – thus reducing time needed to accomplish the task, as some parts of the spectrum may not contain valuable information. On step 3 the user can subtract a background signal (baseline) from the spectrum. The benefit of Raman Fitting Laboratory (RFL) is the baseline is being created and subtracted based on the regions selected by users rather then on individual points (the method used by other software packages). Another benefit is that result of subtraction is updated in real time so the user can see the result of his manipulations with the regions he selects. On step 4, the actual fitting takes place. The user selects the center of the peaks he wants to fit and the method of processing. Again RFL can save time because most of the peaks can be found and marked automatically. Step 5 can be compared to the fine tuning of the results. On step 5, both spectrum and baseline (which was subtracted on step 3) are fitted at the same time. (It should be noticed that RFL from XInstruments is the only package that have such a feature.) The benefit is that final results become much more accurate. Finally, on step 6, the user can save the results of his work. He can also choose to save his work as a project that can later be loaded for processing of similar spectrums. The normally time consuming task of processing a series of similar spectrums is reduced to the processing one spectrum.

Overall XInstruments made tool which can be used by students,professors and laboratory staff to process the Raman spectra in a timely and efficient manner. One can invest time thinking about the results of the experiment rather then spending time on extracting the results experiment.

If you are interested in custom software, please contact us. If you want to know more about our work, please look into our Projects folder.