Researchers at the University of Rochester have created the highest resolution optical image ever, revealing structures as small as carbon nanotubes just a few billionths of an inch across. The new method should open the door to previously inaccessible chemical and structural information in samples as small as the proteins embedded in a cell's membrane.
"This is the highest resolution optical spectroscopic measurement ever made," says Lukas Novotny, professor of optics. "There are other methods that can see smaller structures, but none use light, which is rich in information. With this technique we have a detailed spectrum for every point on a surface."
The ultimate vision for the Raman microscopy project, however, is to refine the process to a point where it might revolutionize biology. "Identifying individual proteins right on the cell's membrane has been the goal of this project from the start," says his colleague, visiting professor Achim Hartschuh.
The article also gives some details about the technology.
The Rochester team's technique, called near-field Raman microscopy, illuminates the nano-sized structures with light, allowing researchers to glean far more information than any other technique.
Please read the article -- a press release in fact -- to get more insights.
What are the plans for the future?
In about two years, Novotny and Hartschuh think they will be able to refine the system, already with a resolution of 20 nanometers (billionths of a meter), so that they can image proteins, which are only 5 to 20 nanometers wide. If all goes well, the research team may try to push the technology even further to derive first-ever optical images of smaller molecules.
This research will be published in one upcoming issue of Physical Review Letters. Here is a link to the abstract of their paper, "High-Resolution Near-Field Raman Microscopy of Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes."
Sources: University of Rochester, February 27, 2003; Achim Hartschuh, Erik J. Sánchez, X. Sunney Xie, and Lukas Novotny, Physical Review Letters, Volume 90, Number 9, March 7, 2003
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