A versatile aid in spectrum assignment: discriminating between fundamentaland non-fundamental vibrational bands in Raman spectra

For the assignment of vibrational spectra, the discrimination between funda mental and non-fundamental vibrations is a pertinent issue that frequently remains unresolved, in particular, for polymer vibrational spectra, In the present paper, we demonstrate that the Stokes/anti-Stokes Raman intensity r atio can be used in a generic method to classify modes into fundamental and non-fundamental groups. The approach is validated by data on tetrachlorome thane, further demonstrations involve polyethylene and urea. (C) 2000 Elsev ier Science B.V. All rights reserved.