METHOD OF DETERMINING THE SPATIAL CONFIGURATION OF MOLECULES IN PARTICLES OR MACROMOLECULES, ESPECIALLY FOR DETERMINING THE SHAPE OF METAL NANOPARTICLES AND DEVICE FOR THE IMPLEMENTATION THEREOF

摘要

The present invention relates to a method and a device for determining the spatial configuration of molecules in particles or macromolecules or the shape of nanometric metallic particles. This method provides for the excitation of said particles or macromolecules placed in solution by way of two pulsed laser beams (E1, E2) that are identical but of different incidence I1, I2 with respect to the tested particles and then the detection of the photons of second-harmonic light (SHG) and the establishment of diagrams of polarization-resolved Hyper-Rayleigh scattering (HRS) intensity for each of the excitation beams. On the basis of each HRS diagram thus determined, a parameter &eegr;E1, &eegr;E2 is calculated for each beam, said parameter being characteristic of the spatial configuration of the molecules within the particles tested, which is determined by transferring the parameters calculated into a previously constructed diagram &eegr;E2=f(&eegr;E1).