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12.1 Introduction
is chapter is designed to introduce techniques that probe the
vibrational properties of molecules’ chemical bonds: Raman
scattering and mid-infrared (MIR) absorption. e greatest
strength of these techniques is that they are intrinsically highly
chemically specic, compared to other spectroscopies such as
uorescence or visible/near-infrared (NIR) absorption.
e two techniques, Raman and MIR absorption, are comple-
mentary. While they provide similar types of information, much
is dierent at the levels of instrumentation and application. In
this chapter, the Raman technique will be presented rst, with
occasiona