Raman spectroscopy of carbon materials and their composites: Graphene, nanotubes and fibres

Raman spectroscopy is now an extremely important technique for the analysis of carbon-based materials. It is demonstrated how it can be used to give a unique insight into characterising many aspects of the microstructure of these materials, including orientation, number of layers, defects and doping, enabling standardisation and quality control. Graphene, as the building block of all sp2 carbon materials is used as the main example and it is demonstrated how the understanding of this material has facilitated the analysis of carbon nanotubes and fibres. It is also shown that the Raman bands shift during deformation and that these shifts are related through a universal calibration. It is demonstrated how these…