Microcavity Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy of Fullerene C₆₀ Bucky Balls

Raman spectroscopy is a widely used characterization technique in material science. It is a non-destructive tool with relatively simple instrumentation, and provides intrinsic qualitative information of analytes by probing their vibrational modes. In many cases, Raman enhancement is essential for detecting low-intensity signals in high-noise environments, spectrally unresolved features, and hidden modes. Here we present optical and Raman spectroscopic characterization of fullerene C 60 in a gold microcavity. The fabrication of single-layered gold mirrors is facile, low cost and direct but was proven to give considerably significant enhancement. The findings of this work demonstrate the cavity resonance as a powerful tool in obtaining tunability over individual peak for selective enhancement in the tuned spectral range. The PL of the material within the cavity has demonstrated a red shift assumed to be caused by the low-energy transitions. These transitions are induced by virtual low-energy states generated by the cavity. We further observe that adopting this principle enables resolution of active Raman modes that until now were unobserved. Finally, we assigned the new experimentally observed modes to the corresponding motions calculated by DFT.