Surface-enhanced femtosecond CARS spectroscopy (SE-CARS) on pyridine

Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) has become an integral part of spectroscopy. The inelastic scattering process is enhanced by several orders of magnitude when molecules are in close contact to nano-structured coin metals. However, the use of surface enhancement in combination with nonlinear spectroscopy is by far not as common as in linear spectroscopy even though a more drastic effect could be expected. In our work, we report the observations we made from the preliminary studies on surface enhancement mechanisms in combination with coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering (CARS) using femtosecond laser pulses. Silver colloids were used as enhancement medium. Molecules, which show conventional SERS were selected for the experiments. Femtosecond CARS was performed on these molecular systems in the presence and absence of silver colloids. The scattered CARS signal was collected both in the forward and sideward directions. From the analysis of the results general observations were made about the factors affecting the performance of SE-CARS.