Presentation - Infrared Nanoscopy: Going Beyond the Diffraction Limit on a Tabletop Instrument

Dr Tofail Syed, LANIR Project Coordinator presented at AAAS Conference in San Jose, California, USA on 13 February 2015

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Annual Meeting is a widely recognized global science gathering, bringing thousands of scientists, engineers, policymakers, educators, and journalists together to discuss the most recent developments in science and technology.The 2015 Meeting Theme was Innovations, Information and Imaging. The LANIR Presentation was part of the "I See, Therefore I Can" symposium which highlighted three projects looking at different approaches for nanoscopic imaging using electrons, X-rays, lasers, and microwaves. The organizer was Dr. Rene Martins, European Commission. 

Abstract: The ability to image molecular building blocks in ambient conditions is critical to advance our understanding of cellular and sub-cellular biological processes and industrial quality control for nano-enabled products. While far field vibrational spectroscopies such as infra-red (IR) absorption, is capable of revealing the chemical structure currently spatial resolution with these techniques are limited by diffraction even when using a synchrotron source. The near-field approach, while offers high spatial resolutions, is limited to providing surface information only and currently impractical for real life applications in clinical diagnosis and industrial metrology. Far field IR absorption has gained wide popularity for its simplicity and the ability of finger-printing through chemical signatures. As its sensitivity is much higher than Raman scattering based techniques, far field IR is very appealing for nanoscale real time imaging provided that the diffraction limit is overcome. We will present a few breakthrough developments of infrared nansocopy using a far-field, table-top Nanoscope that breaks away from the diffraction barrier of infrared imaging 

More details at aaas.confex.com/aaas/2015/webprogram/Paper13401.html