Anasys Instruments has introduced the NanoIR platform, a measurement tool that reveals the chemical composition of samples at the nanoscale.
Dr Craig Prater, the company's chief technology officer, said: 'The goal of NanoIR technology is to overcome major barriers in AFM [atomic-force microscopy] and conventional IR [infrared] spectroscopy.
'AFM has outstanding resolution, but no ability to perform chemical spectroscopy.
'IR spectroscopy is a benchmark tool for chemical characterisation, but lacks spatial resolution to address nanoscale problems,' he added.
According to Kevin Kjoller, co-founder and vice-president of product development, the NanoIR system provides the high-resolution characterisation of local topographic, mechanical and thermal properties.
The new system combines the nanoscale spatial resolution capabilities of AFM with IR spectroscopy's ability to characterise and identify chemical species.
Users of NanoIR technology can quickly survey regions of a sample via AFM and then rapidly acquire high-resolution chemical spectra at the selected regions.
The system can also be programmed to automatically acquire spectra from an array of points across the sample.
Mechanical and thermal properties, such as local thermal transitions, may also be mapped with nanoscale resolution.
According to Dr Curtis Marcott, senior partner at Light Light Solutions and scientific advisor to Anasys Instruments, the new technology will enable companies to break through the submicron spatial resolution barrier and apply IR spectroscopy to new classes of problems beyond current capabilities.
Potential NanoIR application areas include polymer blends, multilayer films and laminates, organic defect analysis, tissue morphology and histology, sub-cellular spectroscopy and organic photovoltaics.
Polymer spectra acquired with the NanoIR system are rich and interpretable and have demonstrated good correlation with bulk Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectra, according to Anasys.
The NanoIR software allows researchers to export nanoscale IR absorption spectra to standard analysis packages.
With this interface, NanoIR spectra can be used to rapidly analyse samples and to identify specific chemical components.
US and foreign patents for the new system are pending.
