Nanoscale IR Spectroscopy: AFM-IR - A New Technique

摘要

The combination of atomic force microscopy (AFM) and infrared (IR) spectroscopy in the technique of AFM-IR is one of the most important recent developments in the field of IR microspectroscopy and chemical imaging. The importance of IR spectroscopy to our scientific infrastructure needs no introduction given the size of the industry and the breadth of its application. However, the fundamental physical limit imposed by diffraction has prevented the use of this technique in applications requiring high spatial resolution, which is the case for many applications in polymers and the life sciences. AFM-IR uses an AFM probe as the IR absorbance sensor and hence breaks through the diffraction limit to attain spatial resolution improvements of up to two orders of magnitude over traditional IR microspectroscopy.