A compact collinear AOTF Raman spectrometer.

A compact, lightweight, completely packaged, uncooled, fully-automated collinear acousto-optic tunable-filter (AOTF) based spectrometer has been used to measure Raman spectra of three organic energetic materials (NQ, HMX, and TNT) using argon-ion laser excitation. Even though the resolution of the AOTF spectrometer is modest (7.4 cm(-1)) and it was not specifically designed for measuring Raman spectra, it has performed impressively. Such an instrument is specially useful for remote sensing and field measurements. In this paper, we will describe this instrument, present the measured Raman spectra and their comparison with the corresponding FT-IR spectra.