The ancient town of Pompei offers a unique opportunity to study in detail many aspects of the every day life during the Roman early imperial age. The application of micro-Raman spectroscopy can be of great help in performing a reasonably rapid comparative analysis of the mortars, quite useful to ascertain the degree of uniformity of the technical recipes among the various building firms and the eventual technical evolution in the time; moreover, the individuation of minerals of specific geographical origins can give useful information about the extension of commercial intercourses. An example of a micro-Raman investigation on building materials is reported in this work, concerning the analysis of the mortars coming from different points of the wall in the 'The House of the Wedding of Hercules'. Remarkable differences between ancient and modern mortars are found, allowing a discrimination that can be useful in the case of historical building which underwent several restoration works.

In this work, a micro-Raman spectroscopic investigation was carried out in order to identify the pigments used in the canvas oil painting 'Rebecca at the well', which is preserved in MAON museum in Rende, southern Italy. The artwork's history is unknown, and no scientific investigation was performed on it before. Art historians believe that the painting was created in the XVIII century by an artist of the Neapolitan school. Raman spectra were collected by a Jobin Yvon micro-Raman LABRAM apparatus, with a He-Ne laser (632.8 nm) as excitation source. The main original pigments were identified and modern pigments like yellow-orange chrome and phthalocyanine were also found, providing important information about the restoration works and the painting's history.

The structural evolution with temperature of some V2O5 gels and thin films is presented, and the role of the hydrolysis conditions is investigated. Several techniques, i.e., x-ray diffraction, differential thermal analysis, infrared, and temperature-dependent Raman spectroscopy, have been used to follow the thermal behavior of the samples. When the bulk xerogels begin to change from a nanocrystalline phase to the orthorhombic α-V2O5, in the temperature range 280 to 300 °C, a growth of vanadium oxide nanotubes also occurs, while at higher temperatures the crystallization into the α phase prevails. A slightly different evolution is observed for heat treated thin films, which show a structure containing polyvanadate chains near room temperature. They also present a growth of nanotubes for intermediate temperatures and a complete crystallization into the α phase when the temperature is further increased.

In this work, the mechanism of the "gelation" process and the thermal-induced structural modifications of thin film of vanadium pentoxide xerogels deposited on indium tin oxide (ITO)-coated glasses have been studied. Vanadium pentoxide xerogel has been prepared by using the sol-gel proton exchange resin route without any resin pretreatment. To monitor the effect of the "resin efficiency" on the gelation process, the solution coming out from the resin has been collected in a sequence of different containers (vials), separately investigated by Raman spectroscopy. After the spin coating deposition, the thin films of vanadium pentoxide gel have been subjected to different annealing treatments. The highest thermal treatment (600°C) induces a complete transformation of the gel phase into an anhydrous polycrystalline phase of a sodiumcontaining vanadate, different from the usual V 2 O 5 crystal. It is due to the diffusion of foreign ions (mainly sodium) coming from the substrate into the vanadium oxide layer.