Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy for identifying rock composition.

Since long time Raman scattering revealed to be a very sensitive and easy technique to deal with the detection of mineral compounds, due to their vibrational fingerprint. However, presence of small inclusions or identification of grains with very small dimensions in rocks may still remain problematic for normal Raman detection apparatus. In this work, we propose to apply the SERS (surface-enhancement Raman scattering) effect to micro-Raman measurements for the identification and characterization of pyroxene grains embedded in polymorphous rock matrices.