Features

Contained here are links to suppliers, their 50 word entries in the M&A Guide to Microscopy & Microanalysis 2011 and a link to our upcoming blog.

Contained here are links to suppliers, their 50 word entries in the M&A Guide to Microscopy & Microanalysis 2010 and our upcoming blog.

The relationship between structure, morphology, and material properties of polymer coatings is indispensable for optimization of material design. By integrating an AFM to a confocal Raman microscope, micro-phase separation patterns with spherical, cylindrical, lamellar or micellar morphology, with structure sizes in the nanometre regime can be analyzed

The SPM is a useful tool for measuring mechnical properties of materials. Until recently it has been impossible to achieve truly quantitative material property mapping with resolution, precision and convenience. PeakForce QNM makes it now possible to quantitatively identify material variations such as elasticity, adhesion, deformation and dissipation at high resolution across a topographic image

AFM has proven to be a valuable technique for cell biology research. Though originally conceived as a high-resolution imaging technique, it more recently has been used to characterize cell elasticity, measure binding events with a bio-functionalized probe and manipulate objects at the nanoscale for mechano-transduction studies.

For soft biological samples with Young’s moduli in the range of 1 kPa to 100 MPa, the tip-sample contact time could take 20-90% of the time of the entire oscillation cycle. Such a long contact time would not only increase the chance of unwanted sample damage, but also induce possible tip contamination by adhesive organic molecules commonly present on such sample surfaces

With any type of microscope or other nanoinstrument, even a high-powered optical microscope, you have got to put noise isolation there or you will end up with diffused and fuzzy imaging, and sometimes no image at all, resulting in reduced operability of a facility’s nano-equipment. But now negative-stiffness vibration isolation in nanotechnology is gaining popularity