New High-Speed Nano Imaging Device

Posted by ryuzaki0 on Tuesday February 14, 2006 @07:26PM from the i'll-take-two dept.

Roland Piquepaille writes "Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have built a new nano imaging device which is 100 times faster than current technology. Not only is the 'FIRAT' (Force sensing Integrated Readout and Active Tip) much faster than the current 'AFM' (atomic force microscopy), it also is able to take movies and to simultaneously capture several physical properties of nanostructures, such as stiffness, elasticity or viscosity. In fact, the FIRAT probe, which works like a microphone, could one day replace AFM. One of the researchers commented that 'We've multiplied each of the old capabilities by at least 10, and it has lots of new applications.'"

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Sadly, by ian_mackereth · 2006-02-14 19:33 · Score: 5, Funny

my first thought was that we could finally apply phrenology to dust mites.
I need to get out more.
AFM by cocoamix · 2006-02-15 02:12 · Score: 5, Informative

I work with an AFM, and it's a very tempermental machine. The tips are SO delicate, if you look at them wrong, they break and are useless ($10 down the drain). They can only be used once.

It's a slow process finding the resonance frequency, using the slow piezos to move the tip to the near field, and slowly scanning the area. One of the advantages of AFM is that it can be done on completely wet samples.

There's another technology called NSOM. that does much the same thing. Many NSOMs are custom made. We use a Scanning Electron Microscope to check the tips we make to see if they are suitable. Tips are made by slowly stretching a glass wire inder high temperature until the break, giving you 2 NSOM tips.

Neat stuff.