High Microscale Variability in Raman Thermal Maturity Estimates from Shale Organic Matter - Data Release

Here the spatial variation in Raman estimates of thermal maturity within individual organic domains from several shale geologic reference materials originating from the Boquillas, Marcellus, Niobrara, and Woodford Formations are assessed from the respective Raman response. We show that for all four shales the thermal maturity parameters extracted from Raman spectra by iterative peak fitting can vary widely across distances of less than or equal to 5 micrometers within the same organic domain.