Introduction The newly discovered BCS-like superconductor MgB 2 [1, 2] has rapidly attracted the interest of the Raman community. Many contributions [3-6] explored the E 2g phonon mode of MgB 2 with a predicted strong coupling to the electronic conduction s-bands [7]. The published Raman spectra of MgB 2 samples both polycrystalline [3] and small single crystals [4, 5] contain mainly the same structures: broad bands extending from 300 to 1600 cm À1 . The main peak at %600 cm À1 is generally associated with the sought E 2g mode, but its unusually broad width (%270 cm À1 ), as well as the presence of other broad peaks in the spectra make the assignment difficult. On the other hand, TEM, X-ray photoemisson and diffraction studies [8][9][10] indicated the presence of impurity phases such as elemental Mg, MgO, B 2 O 3 , Mg(OH) 2 Á MgCO 3 [6] and MgB 4 [9]. We investigated these impurity phases and present an analysis of the second-order features in the spectra of MgB 2 .