It is quite common that the student engaged in the analysis of properties of materials using spectroscopic techniques based on the effects of infrared absorption, luminescence and Raman scattering, faces difficulties such as the interpretation of the information that can be accessed in each case, the choice of the best technique in order to study a specific phenomenon and, especially, the cross-checking of the information obtained in each one of the three techniques. Trying to make easier the apprenticeship of the rational use of these techniques, we summarize in this paper the fundamental physical principles related to each one of them, and how these principles determine their employment - individually or in a complementary way - to explore their potentiality towards better characterizing the desired properties.
infrared; Raman; photoluminescence; complementarities
