Anasys Instruments scientific co-founder, Professor William King of Georgia Tech, has been named as a member of MIT's Technology Review 2006 TR35, for his work in the area of nanoscale thermal probes
The TR35, chosen by the editors of Technology Review and an elite panel of judges, consists of 35 individuals under age 35 whose innovative work in technology is changing our world.
King's work in thermal characterisation is expected to have profound implications in the characterisation of materials at the nanoscale.
Central to King's groundbreaking work is his understanding of thermal processing gained through his doctoral work at Stanford, followed by a stint at IBM's research facility in Zurich and his current position on the faculty at Georgia Tech.
His breakthrough with the manufacture of a silicon-doped probe that could perform thermal measurements at a resolution of 50nm, led to the nano-TA product from Anasys Instruments.
"Bill's probe breakthroughs have finally brought nanoscale thermal imaging and analysis to the AFM community whose requirements were previously unmet due to the lack of available probes" commented Kevin Kjoller, VP of product development and co-founder of Anasys.
Besides enabling thermal analysis, this characterization capability is now the basis of a brand new imaging mode launched by Anasys called heated tip atomic force microscopy (HT-AFM).
This will enable the AFM user to apply all the modes they are familiar with (tapping; contact; force curves; force volume imaging etc) but use a heated tip instead to get thermal properties of the sample simultaneously with the routine information that these modes have always provided.
Greg Meyers, group leader for AFM at Dow Chemical in Midland, Michigan, USA, and an HT-AFM pioneer had the following comments, "Bill's breakthrough in probe design for HT-AFM removes key roadblocks to advancing scanning thermal microscopy of polymeric materials.
"The probes can be used for tapping mode AFM allowing the full benefits of phase imaging to find regions of interest.
"The nanoscale contact areas now confine local thermal measurements to where many significant morphologies occur in polymer blends, multilayers, and composites".
"HT-AFM offers sub-micron analysis and imaging capabilities for pharmaceutical systems that gives information on structure, crystallinity and polymorphism no other technique can provide" commented Professor Duncan Craig, head of pharmacy at the University of East Anglia,UK, another leading HT-AFM user.
The first products from Anasys included the nano-TA accessory (launched in early 2006) enabled AFM users to look at transition temperatures of individual phases on the 100nm scale, improving the state of the art by 50x.
This has revolutionary implications for the fields of polymers and pharmaceuticals.
