A research team at Berkeley Lab's Molecular Foundry has developed a chemical mapping technique that offers a nanoscale insight into materials.
The maps will help identify molecular chemistry and communications at the nanoscale, a feature essential to simulated photosynthesis, biofuels manufacture and light-harvesting applications like solar cells.
Alexander Weber-Bargioni, a postdoctoral student, says the method will allow capture of high-resolution pictures of nanomaterials with physical and chemical data at each pixel. The team developed a coaxial antenna that can point light at the nanoscale.
Gold wound around a silicon nitride atomic force microscope tip acts as an optical scanner for structures having nanometer resolution over a long period. It delivers light intensity to determine the chemical fingerprint at each pixel during image capture. This data can produce multiple maps that contain chemical information at every pixel at 20nm. The information helps monitor nanomaterials whose behavior is impacted by surface interfaces.
The team studied carbon nanotubes that are suitable for communicative analysis because their characteristics can detect local chemical alterations.
Source: http://www.lbl.gov/