Abstract:
The foundation of scattering phenomena of light was laid as early as 1922 when Brillouin
predicted scattering of light by long wavelength elastic sound waves [1]. Later in 1928,
Sir C. V. Raman and K. S. Krishnan discovered the Raman Effect [2], which describes
the inelastic scattering of light by molecules. Soon it was realized that this phenomenon
is an excellent tool to study excitations of molecule and get information about molecular
structure. Raman scattering is a weak process (one part in a million photons get scattered
inelastically) and use of mercury lamps then (not a very good light source) further
disregarded its use as a fundamental tool. The discovery of laser and intense
monochromatic sources in 1960 saw progress in light scattering and the beginning of a
new era. Since then there has been rapid expansion in the versatility of Raman system
that now incorporates microscopes and fiber optic bundles to illuminate and view the
sample. Thus, with the development in technology Raman scattering has emerged out as
very important technique for molecule characterization.
