ChemIONS

A new measurement technique which mingles the amazing resolution of atomic force microscopy and the exceptional chemical identification of infrared spectroscopy is been developed by researchers from University of Illinois! Researchers demonstrated that imaging extraction and chemical analysis of femto-gram samples can be achieved using a heated cantilever probe in an atomic force microscope. They used a silicon cantilever probe with an integrated heater-thermometer.

The cantilever tip temperature can be precisely controlled over a temperature range of 25 to 1,000 degrees Celsius. Using this special cantilever probe, anyone selectively image and extract a very small sample of the material to be analyzed. Also the actual mass of this sample can be determined by a cantilever resonance technique. For the analysis the sample, the heater temperature is raised to slightly above the melting point of the sample material. The material is then analyzed by complementary Raman or Fourier transform infrared spectroscopic imaging, which provides a molecular characterization of samples down to femtogram level in minutes.

As a demonstration of the technique, the researchers scanned a piece of paraffin with their probe, and removed a sample for analysis. Raman and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy is used then to chemically analyze the sample. The paraffin was removed by thermal decomposition, allowing reuse of the probe after one analysis. (Source: http://www.news.uiuc.edu/)