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Report from IUPAC-Sponsored Symposium

 

Raman Spectroscopy
20th International Conference on Raman Spectroscopy (ICORS 2006),
20-25 August 2006, Yokohama, Japan.

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by Hiro-o Hamaguchi

The 20th International Conference on Raman Spectroscopy (ICORS 2006) was held 20-25 August 2006 in Yokohama, Japan, under the sponsorship of IUPAC, the Chemical Society of Japan, the Physical Society of Japan, and the Spectroscopical Society of Japan. A total of 554 people attended the conference from 32 countries, including Japan (264), USA (56), Germany (39), UK (29), China (27), Korea (26), France (14), Taiwan (12), Australia (10), Canada (10), and the Czech Republic (10). Of the attendees, 136 were students; 72 were from overseas, and 64 from Japan. The organizing committee was very pleased with the unexpectedly high attendance, in particular, with the high ratio of student participants. It was also noteworthy that 28 companies exhibited their products/books at the conference. If those who took part at the exhibition were included, well over 600 people participated in ICORS 2006. The Industrial/Academic Cooperating Committee headed by Dr. Hideyuki Ishida played a crucial role in attracting many industrial people to ICORS.

The subjects covered in ICORS 2006 were categorized into 18 sections:

    1. Theory
    2. Resonance Raman Spectroscopy
    3. Time-Resolved Raman Spectroscopy and Ultrafast Phenomena
    4. Non-Linear Raman Spectroscopy
    5. Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy
    6. Vibrational Analysis and Molecular Structure
    7. Liquids, Solutions, Liquid Crystals, and Ionic Liquids
    8. Solids, Crystals, Glasses, and Gels
    9. Thin Layers, Surfaces, and Interfaces
    10. Application to Material Science and Technology
    11. New Functional Materials, Fullerenes, Carbon Nanotubes, Conducting Polymers
    12. Application to Biology and Biological Molecules; Tissues, Cells, Proteins, and Nucleic Acids
    13. Medical Applications
    14. Application to Solid-State Physics; Conductivity, Magnetic Properties, and Phase Transition
    15. Industrial Applications; Semiconductors, Process Monitoring, Catalysts, and Fuel Cells
    16. Raman Imaging; Confocal/Near-Field/Tip-Enhanced Raman Microspectroscopy, Bioimaging, and Stress Analysis
    17. Raman Spectroscopy under Extreme Conditions: High Temperature, High Pressure, and High Magnetic Fields
    18. New Raman Spectroscopy: Near-Infrared and X-Ray

The scientific program consisted of 12 plenary lectures (40 minutes), 31 invited lectures (30 minutes), 146 invited talks (20 minutes), and 348 posters, and covered a wide range of basic as well as practical applications of Raman spectroscopy. It started with the opening plenary lecture by Leo Esaki on "Superlattices as Roots of New Physics and Nanoelectronics." The other plenary lectures and their titles were as follows:

    • J. Nordgren, "Resonant Soft X-Ray Emission Spectroscopy"
    • R.P. Van Duyne, "Molecular Plasmonics for Surface Enhanced Sensing and Raman Spectroscopy"
    • S. Kawata, "Near-Field Raman Microscopy: A Walk Beyond the Traditions"
    • T. Kitagawa, "Raman Investigation of Roles of Heme Side Chains in Biological Function"
    • X.S. Xie, "CARS Microscopy: Seeing Invisibles in Living Organisms", Z.-Q. Tian, "Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering From Non-traditional Substrates and Nanostructures: Towards a Versatile Vibrational Strategy"
    • M. Cardona, "The Linewidths of Raman Active Phonons"
    • S.A. Asher, "UV Raman Probing of the Reaction Coordinate in Protein Folding"
    • A.W. Parker, "Raman Spectroscopy Using Ultrafast Kerr Gating"
    • P.M. Champion, "Impulsively Driven Raman Coherence and the Dynamics and Function of Heme Proteins"
    • R. Withnall, "Raman Spectroscopy as a Probe of Coloured Materials"

These plenary lectures represented the ICORS tradition of balanced coverage of physics, chemistry, and biology. The program is still available at <www.pac.ne.jp/icors2006>.

ICORS 2006 was accompanied by six satellite meetings; International Workshop on X-Ray Raman and Related Phenomena (Okazaki), Protein Dynamics and Biological Applications of Time-Resolved Spectroscopy (Kobe), Tsukuba Satellite Symposium on Single Molecule and Tip-Enhanced Raman Scattering (Tsukuba), International Symposium on Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering (Nishinomiya), New Horizons of Medical Applications of Spectroscopy (Tokyo), and International Workshop on Time-Resolved Spectroscopy (Wako). These satellite meetings provided extra opportunities for attendees to discuss more specific subjects in smaller groups.

Newly emerged concepts like "space offset Raman spectroscopy," "molecular near-field effect in resonance hyper-Raman scattering," and "surface-sensitive fourth-order coherent Raman spectroscopy" were presented and discussed. Reported Raman spectra included those of molecules, ions, reaction intermediates, molecular assemblies, quantum dots, semiconductors, crystals, drugs, living cells, and human tissues, under a variety of conditions and environments. ICORS 2006 impressively indicated the depth and width of Raman spectroscopy and its recent explosive development that may well lead to the second renaissance of Raman spectroscopy. The 21st ICORS will be held in London 17-22 August 2008.

Hiro-o Hamaguchi <[email protected]> was the conference chair of ICORS 2006. He is a professor of physical chemistry at the University of Tokyo.

 

> referred to Chem. Int. March/Apr 2007


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