Raman scattering of water and photoluminescence of pollutants arising from solid–water interaction

Abstract Systematic Raman experiments performed on water and water–ethanol samples, stored in different containers (fused silica, polypropylene, soda-lime glass type III) for several hours, have shown that the luminescence contribution to the Raman signal fluctuations is directly related to the container composition. Intensity fluctuations as large as 98%, have been observed in the spectral regions corresponding to the both water intramolecular and intermolecular vibrations, despite the fact that the wavenumbers of the modes remained unchanged. We undoubtedly attribute these fluctuations to a luminescence phenomenon on the basis of: (i) the absence of such effect in the anti-Stokes domain, (ii) its dependence on the excitation laser wavelength, (iii) other relevant photoluminescence experiments. This luminescence is attributed to pollutants at ultra-low concentration coming from the different containers.