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46633-AC6
The Vibrational Spectrum, Structure, and Bonding of Liquid Carbon

Richard James Saykally, University of California (Berkeley)

The objective of this project is to characterize the nature of the liquid state of carbon.  The approach is to non-thermally melt a graphite target with a femtosecond laser, and to then measure the vibrational spectrum of the melt as a function of delay time after the melting pulse, using our recently developed chirped-CARS methodology.

The c-CARS experiment has been reconfigured for this purpose, and tested on a variety of liquid and gaseous samples to characterize the sensitivity and spectral resolution (Figure 1).  The Raman spectrum of nonthermally-melted solid graphite has been measured (Figure 2).

Figure 1. The c-CARS spectrum of ethane gas

Figure 2. The Raman spectrum of nonthermally-melted graphite

A properly configured sample holder/manipulator has been constructed, and finely polished graphite samples have recently been obtained.  We will be ready to attempt the actual CARS experiment very soon.