Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends
How new technologies are modifying our way of life


mardi 4 mars 2003
 

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


11:53:27 AM  Permalink  Comments []  Trackback []


Click here to visit the Radio UserLand website. © Copyright 2004 Roland Piquepaille.
Last update: 01/11/2004; 11:43:32.

March 2003
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
            1
2 3 4 5 6 7 8
9 10 11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18 19 20 21 22
23 24 25 26 27 28 29
30 31          
Feb   Apr



Search this blog for

Courtesy of PicoSearch


Personal Links



Other Links

Ars Technica
BoingBoing
Daily Rotation News
Geek.com
Gizmodo
Microdoc News
Nanodot
Slashdot
Smart Mobs
Techdirt
Technorati


People

Dave Barry
Paul Boutin
Dan Bricklin
Dan Gillmor
Mitch Kapor
Lawrence Lessig
Jenny Levine
Karlin Lillington
Jean-Luc Raymond
Ray Ozzie
John Robb
Jean-Yves Stervinou
Dolores Tam
Dylan Tweney
Jon Udell
Dave Winer
Amy Wohl


Drop me a note via Radio
Click here to send an email to the editor of this weblog.

E-mail me directly at
pique@noos.fr

Subscribe to this weblog
Subscribe to "Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends" in Radio UserLand.

XML Version of this page
Click to see the XML version of this web page.

Technorati Profile

Listed on BlogShares