Anasys Instruments reports on the study of cultural heritage painting cross-sections by researchers from UCSB and the Getty Conservation Institute using their breakthrough AFM-based nanoscale mass spectrometry technique. 

The analysis of cultural heritage materials presents a number of challenges such as: limited and extremely small samples, complexity of sample structure, the importance of maintaining spatial integrity and, most notably, the rarity of the samples. These limitations present specific challenges for the identification of many traditional organic dyes, particularly in paintings that may have multiple original paint layers (depending on the artist’s...

Anasys Instruments reports on the new AFM-IR results from the Energy Research Group at NIST just published in the journal for Advanced Optical Materials. The paper is entitled “Nanoscale imaging and spectroscopy of plasmonic modes with the PTIR technique.”

Researchers from the NIST Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology (CNST) and the University of Maryland have used photothermal induced resonance (PTIR) to characterize individual plasmonic nanomaterials in order to obtain absorption maps and the first examples of absorption spectra with nanometer-scale resolution. Nanostructuring of plasmonic materials enables engineering of their resonant optical response and creates new opportunities for applications that benefit from...

Anasys Instruments reports on the recent installation of an AFM-IR system at the Corrosion & Protection Centre, part of the School of Materials at the University of Manchester for use by the group of Professor Stuart Lyon.

Corrosion is of primary concern in many industrial sectors, including oil, transportation, infrastructure, nuclear, and even bio-technology. At the University of Manchester, the Corrosion and Protection Centre has one of the world’s largest academic bases focused on corrosion and its control. Professor Stuart Lyon is the Director of Research and AkzoNobel Professor of Corrosion Control in the School of Materials. His research interests are...

Anasys Instruments reports on EPFL’s Francesco Simone Ruggeri success winning a poster award at the recent annual meeting of the Swiss Physics Society held at the University of Fribourg. 

Francesco Simone Ruggeri is a member of the Doctoral Program in the group of Professor Giovanni Dietler, head of the Laboratory of the Physics of Living Matter at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). The research activity of the laboratory of physics of living matter is mainly devoted to the study of DNA topology, cellular machines, protein mechanics and high-resolution low temperature Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM)...

Anasys Instruments reports on EPFL’s latest research on lysozyme droplets and α-synuclein macromolecular aggregates illustrating application of the nanoscale AFM-IR technique to demonstrate α to β secondary structure transition associated with amyloid formation. 

Proteins aggregating into amyloid structures are involved in important neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. During aggregation, initially monomeric proteins undergo internal structural rearrangement forming amyloid fibrils with a universal cross β -sheet quaternary structure. During fibrillation, several coexisting amyloidogenic species are formed and the study of these species would allow...

Anasys Instruments reports on a new publication from their nanoIR users at NIST which assess the chemical composition of a metal-organic framework with nanoscale resolution. The publication may be accessed in the leading journal “Angewandte Chemie International Edition.”

Researchers from the NIST Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology (CNST), in collaboration with researchers from University of Lyon, France, have applied a novel microscopy technique to characterize metal-organic framework (MOF) materials, potentially opening a pathway for engineering the chemical properties of these materials at the nanoscale.* MOFs are composed of metal ions connected by organic linker molecules to form 3D-crystalline networks of nanopores with....

Anasys Instruments is pleased to announce that the inventor of the AFM-IR technique, Professor Alexandre Dazzi from the Université Paris-Sud, is to receive the Ernst Abbe Memorial Award.

The award is given by the New York Microscopy Society and will be presented at the 2014 Eastern Analytical Symposium and Exhibition being held November 17-19, Somerset, New Jersey, USA. Professor Alexandre Dazzi, from the Laboratoire de Chimie Physique at the Université Paris-Sud has been selected to receive the New York Microscopy Society’s Ernst Abbe Award. Since its inception in 1973, 24 scientists have been recognized including innovators such as Albert V. Crewe (inventor of Scanning Electron Transmission Microscopy), Edwin H. Land (inventor of Polaroid photography), Gerd Binning & Heinrich Rohrer (inventors of AFM)...

Anasys Instruments reports on the publication in the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters demonstrating the use of AFM-IR used by French researchers to identify best microbes for biofuel production.

While the debate over using crops for fuel continues, scientists are now reporting a new, fast approach to develop biofuel in a way that doesn't require removing valuable farmland from the food production chain. Their work examining the fuel-producing potential of Streptomyces, a soil bacterium known for making antibiotics, appears in ACS' The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters (see footnote). The scientists used atomic force microscopy combined with infrared spectroscopy (AFM-IR) to measure the size and map the distribution of oil inclusions inside of microorganism without staining or other special sample preparation...

Anasys Instruments reports on EPFL's publication in Plant Cell on the use of nanoIR to look into the process of photosynthesis to shed more light on how plants produce energy

École Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, better known as EPFL, has recently reported on how a group of its scientists have used powerful imaging techniques including nanoIR to support a study which sheds light on photosynthesis. All plants use a form of photosynthesis to produce energy, though not all rely exclusively on it. In higher plants, capturing light takes place in specialized compartments called thylakoids. These are found in cell organelles called chloroplasts, which are the equivalent of a power station for the plant....

Anasys Instruments announces the release of the nanoIR2™, the second generation of AFM-based IR spectroscopy.

 Anasys Instruments is proud to announce the 

Anasys Instruments reports on three user groups who have published peer reviewed papers where nanoIR is being applied to look at characterization challenges in semiconductors, polymers and healthcare.

There have been several recent exciting publications by nanoIR users in a number of growing applications areas. These include plasmonics, health care, fuel cell membranes and polymer nanostructures. Three of these publications are reported here. Nanoscale Imaging of Plasmonic Hot Spots and Dark Modes with the Photothermal-Induced Resonance Technique. The lead author is Dr Andrea Centrone from NIST, USA. In this publication from NIST, the AFM-IR technique is applied for the first time to image the dark plasmonic resonance of gold asymmetric split ring resonators (A-SRRs) in the mid-infrared (IR) spectral region with nanoscale resolution...

Anasys Instruments announces a new application for AFM-IR to study as reported by research scientists in NIST publication "Tech Beat."

Researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Maryland have shown how to make nanoscale measurements of critical properties of plasmonic nanomaterials—the specially engineered nanostructures that modify the interaction of light and matter for a variety of applications, including sensors, cloaking (invisibility), photovoltaics and therapeutics. Their technique is one of the few that allows researchers to make actual physical measurements of these materials at the nanoscale without affecting the nanomaterial's function...

Anasys Instruments reports on the announcement from the University of Illinois which describes the effect of nanometer-scale heating on semiconductor plasmonic microparticles which reveal surface plasmon resonance. The work is described in a paper published in Applied Physics Letters.

Recent progress in the engineering of plasmonic structures has enabled new kinds of nanometer-scale optoelectronic devices as well as high-resolution optical sensing. But until now, there has been a lack of tools for measuring nanometer-scale behavior in plasmonic structures which are needed to understand device performance and to confirm theoretical models...

Anasys Instruments reports on the recent publication from the University of Illinois which describes the development of a novel technique for chemical identification at the nanometer scale based on AFM-IR. The work is described in a paper published in the Review of Scientific Instruments 84.

For more than 20 years, researchers have been using atomic force microscopy (AFM) to measure and characterize materials at the nanometer scale. However AFM-based measurements of chemistry and chemical properties of materials were generally not possible, until now...

Dr Andrzej Kulik is a research associate in the Laboratory of the Physics of Living Matter at the EPFL in Switzerland.

Under the leadership of Professor Giovanni Dietler, the research activity of the laboratory of physics of living matter is mainly devoted to the study of DNA topology, cellular machines, protein mechanics and high-resolution low temperature Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM). Through internal and external collaborations, a certain number of other research activities are carried out in particular on knots hydrodynamics, DNA gel electrophoresis, cell elasticity, cell motility, etc. Kulik and his colleagues are measuring the mechanical properties of proteins, cells and tissues. To date, AFM has been the main tool but is now complemented with the arrival of a nanoIR™ AFM-IR system from Anasys...

Anasys Instruments continues to expand the capabilities of their nanoscale materials characterization techniques with the Lorentz Contact Resonance (LCR) imaging mode. This is now available for their afm+^® and nanoIR™ systems

The rapid introduction of nanostructured materials continues to drive nanoscale characterization techniques to provide timely, accurate, easy to use analysis methods. Anasys designs breakthrough, award-winning products that measure nanoscale material properties while providing high quality AFM imaging

Anasys Instruments report on the use of their award-winning nanoscale characterization instrumentation to advance developments in the understanding of drug delivery systems

Anasys Instruments announces a new paper authored by Dr Andrea Centrone and his colleagues at NIST published recently in Small, a leading publication which focuses on the nano and micro worlds