The techniques and capabilities of near infrared (NIR) multichannel microprobing are described in detail in this paper.The advantages and drawbacks of various kinds of instruments used to measure Raman spectra excited in the NIR spectral range have been extensively studied and compared. We demonstrate that a dispersive spectrometer specially designed to match the recently improved NIR multichannel detectors (silicon-based CCD,Germanium and InGaAs photodiode arrays) may provide better results than a Fourier Transform Interferometer in two fields:- spatial resolution close to the diffraction limit in a micro-Raman confocal configuration (1.5 to 2 μm) and- extension of the Raman spectrum to the low-frequency region (Stokes and Anti-Stokes).Moreover, to observe the excitation profiles of both resonance and fluorescence, a combined multichannel instrument covering the entire range from 0.4 to 1.5 μm enables the user to select the best conditions of measurement.For the study of very small samples (close to the diffraction limit),it is optically impossible to fill in the wide entrance aperture of the interferometer with the image of the sample while covering correctly the optical elements inside the interferometer.
