Raman spectroscopy is a useful and non-destructive tool for the structural characterization of diamond-like carbon (DLC) films. Even though Raman spectroscopy is not a quantitative technique, the area integral intensity ratio of D and G peaks (ID/IG) derived by the fitting of separate Gaussian curves usually serves as an indicator of the quality trend of diamond-like material. However, conflicting reports still exist on the diamond-like films analyzed by the fitting method of Raman spectra. In this work we show that the quality trend of the diamond-like/graphitic carbon ratio is critically dependent upon the boundary conditions of the analytic regions. We also examine the possibility of directly applying the peak height ratio HD/HG as an alternative method to analyze Raman spectra. The method based on peak height ratios (HD/HG), and an established method using ID/IG ratios can give similar results depending on the choice, in the latter method, of the boundary conditions used for integration. However, the method based on the determination of peak heights avoids the arbitrary assignment of integral boundary conditions while additionally generating a data set that shows statistically smaller standard deviations than the commonly used integration method

This paper discusses the application of a direct integral area method and a multi-Gaussian curve fitting method to the interpretation of visible Raman spectra. A data analysis study was performed on three amorphous carbon films prepared by magnetron sputtering. Application of XPS, AES and the direct integration of the areas under the curves generated by visible Raman spectra, gave results that represented the diamondlike qualities of three amorphous carbon films in a similar manner, but the representation of data-trends using the multi-Gaussian curve fitting method was irregular. More specifically, we discovered that both the number of Gaussian curves applied, and the analytic regions chosen for analyzing the spectra affected the interpretation of the data obtained; our results indicate that the multi-Gaussian curve fitting method may give rise to inconsistent results when applied to the analysis of the visible Raman spectra of diamond-like (amorphous) carbon films.

A conducting polyacetylene chloride polymer was synthesized by the electropolymerization of trichloroethylene, using the monomer in a concentration range from 0.0025 to 0.04 M, with 1.8 to 2.1 V vs. Ag/Ag + applied potential, and tetrabutylammonium perchlorate (0.1 M) and the organic electrolyte tetrabutylammonium tetrafluoroborate (0.01 M) in acetonitrile (50 ml), with mild agitation at room temperature. The electropolymerization was found to have several reaction steps in a paired electrolysis system. A reaction mechanism is proposed and a descriptive mathematical function was developed into a theoretical analysis, which correlates well with the experimental results. The rate determining step was found to be the separation of the Cl ) ion. The paired electrolysis current of trichloroethylene (TCE) can be expressed by the following function:þ 66:92 1 X :where X is exp()b 2 Fg 2 /RT) and b 2 and g 2 represent a transfer constant and the overpotential.