Horiba Jobin-Yvon Labram HR Evolution confocal Raman microscope

The Horiba LabRAM HR Evolution is installed on a Kinematic Systems 5100 air-compressed kinematic table. The spectrometer has a focal length of 800 mm and is coupled to an Olympus BX41 confocal microscope equipped with a Märzhäuser Wetzlar SCANplus motorized XYZ stage (75x50mm). The spectrometer is equipped with a 150 and 1800 grooves/mm grating. Samples can be excited in backscattering geometry with (1) a 532 nm frequency-doubled Nd:YAG laser with 100 mW power, (2) a 532 nm HeNe laser with 17 mW power or (3) a 785 nm intracavity regulated, diode laser with 100 mW power.

Rayleigh edge rejection filters are used to obtain laser line cut-off lower than 50 cm^-1. The scattered signal is measured with a peltier-cooled, Synapse front-illuminated Electron Multiplying (EM)-CCD detector with 1600x200 pixels (16 µm pixel size). For observation, Olympus achromatic 5x and 20x MPLN objectives are available. Raman analyses are performed with Olympus achromatic 50x MPLN LWD (NA: 0.5; WD: 10.6 mm), 100x MPLN LWD (NA: 0.8; WD: 3.4 mm) or 100x MPLN (NA: 0.9; WD: 0.21 mm) objectives. The confocal pinhole aperture can be variably changed.

For the purpose of mapping, several hard- and software extension are available:  (1) the NavSharp and ViewSharp modules, (2) multivariate analyses packages, (3) the DuoScan area scanning module, and (4) the SWIFT XS detector trigging module. In addition, a Linkam heating-cooling cell (-196 °C to 600 °C), a microcuvette cell holder as well accessories for polarized Raman measurements are available .

Raman shift calibration are performed using the NIST certified Horiba SP-RCO calibration objective. The intensity of the Raman spectra is calibrated with an intensity correction curve which is determined by analyzing the white light irradiance spectrum of a NIST certified Avantes AvaLight-HAL-CAL-Mini source.