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Towards stable and sustainable Raman imaging of large samples at the nanoscale

Raman spectroscopy, an optical microscopy technique, is a non-destructive chemical analysis technique that provides rich molecular fingerprint information about chemical structure, phase, crystallinity and molecular interactions. This technique relies on the interaction of light with chemical bonds in a material. However, because light is a wave, optical microscopy cannot resolve distances of less than half the wavelength from the light incident on the sample. This is known as the “diffraction limit,” which prevents Raman spectroscopy and other optical microscopy techniques from achieving nanoscale resolution. To increase the spatial resolution, another technique called “tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy” (TERS) was invented, which can achieve a spatial resolution below the diffraction limit. In TERS, a nano-sized metal tip confines light in a nano-sized volume just above the sample. The light interacts with the sample molecules on the surface and imaging is done by analyzing the sc

Towards sustainable and stable Raman imaging of large samples at the nanoscale

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Conventional nanoscale imaging is usually difficult to perform for large micron-scale samples due to aberrations caused by thermal effects and vibrations. Now, researchers from Japan are tackling this problem with a newly developed imaging system that compensates for the aberration. Credit: Professor Prabhat Verma of Osaka University Raman spectroscopy, an optical microscopy technique, is a non-destructive chemical analysis technique that provides rich molecular fingerprint information about chemical structure, phase, crystallinity and molecular interactions. This technique relies on the interaction of light with chemical bonds in a material. However, because light is a wave, optical microscopy cannot resolve distances of less than half the wavelength from the light incident on the sample. This is known as the “diffraction limit,” which prevents Raman spectroscopy and other optical microscopy techniques from achieving nanoscale resolution.