Adsorption of heptane–toluene binary mixtures on a hydrophobic polymer surface

Phase of the second-order susceptibility in vibrational sum frequency generation spectroscopy: Origins, utility, and measurement techniques

Vibrational sum frequency generation can provide valuable structural information at surfaces and buried interfaces. Relating the measured spectra to the complex-valued second-order susceptibility χ(2) is at the heart of the technique and a requisite step in nearly all subsequent analyses. The magnitude and phase of χ(2) as a function of frequency reveal important information about molecules and materials in regions where centrosymmetry is broken. In this tutorial-style perspective, the origins of the χ(2) phase are first described, followed by the utility of phase determination. Finally, some practical methods of phase extraction are discussed.

Vibrational sum frequency spectroscopy of thin film interfaces

We describe a basic theoretical treatment of how film-substrate and substrate-environment (air, water, and solution) interfaces can be selectively probed by controlling the film thickness and beam angles in a visible-infrared sum frequency generation experiment. In this model, we also account for the unique interfacial environment that may have optical properties that differ from the adjacent bulk phases. We see that this affects components of the electric field that are perpendicular to the surface such as when p-polarized light is used. We then provide an example using the glass-polydimethylsiloxane-air system and model the fields at both surfaces of the polymer. This is followed by some practical considerations for setting up such experiments and some typical experimental results.

Determination of Surface Preference Using Heterospectral Surface-Bulk Correlation Spectroscopy

We outline a method by which the surface preference of a species in a multicomponent mixture may be obtained using surface-specific visible-infrared sum frequency generation (SFG) spectroscopy combined with bulk infrared absorption and/or Raman data. In general, the problem is complicated by the fact that the SFG signal is a function of both the surface coverage and the structure of the molecules. Two-dimensional correlation analysis can be used to reveal which spectral features are changing synchronously, that is, in phase with each other, and which ones are evolving in a manner that is phase-shifted by 90° (asynchronous correlation) as a function of the bulk composition. We provide a framework for determining the surface preference from the correlations between the vibrational modes in the SFG spectra and between the modes from SFG and bulk infrared and/or Raman spectra. When compared to the equivalent analysis performed using the SFG spectra alone, this method can be used with the data obtained using a single-beam polarization and in congested spectral regions where fitting to isolate the behavior of individual vibrational modes is not robust.