Laser-damaging as a useful tool for materials characterization by Raman microscopy

The deliberate transformation of materials caused by laser radiation in Ram an microscopy is used for a better deduction of structural information of a materials system. Investigation of transformed material allows the charact erization of the molecular structure of the genuine material. A special adv antage is the transformation of amorphous phases to crystalline structures by laser-induced oxidation. Also, the crystallization into different crysta lline phases in order to obtain spectra that can be interpreted with more r eliability will be possible. Titanium oxides formed tribochemically as reac tion products in wear scars, tribologically stressed ADLC hard coatings or potentiodynamically produced Ti/Ca/P/O layers were modified by laser-induce d crystallization or oxidation. Raman analysis of these materials provide r esults that cannot be deduced from the spectra of the untreated materials. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.