Equipment in Physics

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How do I get started? Research at Victoria Employment areas

Kathryn Washburn is a PhD student studying physics at Victoria University. She is using a sophisticated research apparatus called an Ellipsometer in the Raman Spectroscopy Laboratory at Victoria University.

What is Raman Spectroscopy?

When a hard rubber ball bounces off a wall it comes back at essentially the same speed at which it hit the wall. The collision is elastic – no kinetic energy is lost. When a lump of clay hits a wall it may stick or bounce back slowly, losing much of its kinetic energy. This is an inelastic collision. Photons (light quanta) are usually scattered by a surface in an elastic process so that the scattered photons have the same energy as the incident photons. But some of the photons are scattered inelastically and lose some energy. Raman spectroscopy uses these inelastically scattered photons to study the structure of the material at the atomic and molecular level.

How do I get started?

Raman spectroscopy uses lots of optics and electronics to study the properties of technologically and scientifically important materials. You will first study optics in your first year as a physics student at Victoria in PHYS 114 and again in PHYS 115. You’ll see some of the quantum physics you need to understand how the light interacts with the sample also in PHYS 114 and PHYS 115. You can begin studying electronics in your first year in TECH 102 . Later, in your second and third years, you’ll have a chance to study all of these subjects in more depth in courses like Electromagnetism and Classical Fields; Thermal Physics; Quantum, Atomic, and Nuclear Physics, and Solid State and Nuclear Physics.

Research at Victoria

Scientists in the School of Chemical and Physical Sciences at Victoria University are doing a lot of leading-edge research in the Raman Spectroscopy Laboratory. For example, Dr. Pablo Etchegoin’s group studies plasmons in materials that may be used in future generations of optical devices. Dr. Joe Trodahl, Dr. Ben Ruck, and their collaborators use Raman spectroscopy to study thin films of nitride materials such as gallium nitride used to make diode lasers in the next generation DVD players.

Employment Areas

There are lots of practical applications of Raman spectroscopy, but more than that students with training in optics and electronics are useful to lots of companies. In fact, the ellipsometer shown in the gold orb was manufactured by a New Zealand company located in Wellington called Beaglehole Instruments. The company was founded by a former Victoria University Physics Professor and employs a number of recent Vic graduates.