Thermal microscopy advances

Recent advances in microscopy have provided instruments that can identify new polymorphs more precisely. Using a PC interfaced to a hot-stage polarizing microscope, thermal events can be visualized and archived and even be used to create a video file. Hot-stage microscopy (HSM) facilitates the identification of phase transformations, monotropic and enantiotropic relationships, crystalline to amorphous phase transitions, the appearance... 

Phospholipid molecules form bilayer films or membranes about 5 nm in thickness as illustrated in Fig. XV-10. Vesicles or liposomes are closed bilayer shells in the 100-1000-nm size range formed on sonication of bilayer forming amphiphiles. Vesicles find use as controlled release and delivery vehicles in cosmetic lotions, agrochemicals, and, potentially, drugs. The advances in cryoelec-tron microscopy (see Section VIII-2A) in recent years have aided their characterization [70-72]. Additional light and x-ray scattering measurements reveal bilayer thickness and phase transitions [70, 71]. Differential thermal analysis... 

A.H. Deutchman and R.J. Partyka (Beam Alloy Corporation observe, "Characterization and classification of thin diamond films depend both on advanced surface-analysis techniques capable of analyzing elemental composition and microstructure (morphology and crystallinity), and on measurement of macroscopic mechanical, electrical, optical and thermal properties. Because diamond films are very thin (I to 2 micrometers or less) and grain and crystal sizes are very small, scanning electron microscopy... 

It is clear that the introduction of the IR FPA detector has brought Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) microscopy with a thermal source to a new and exciting stage of development. This is illustrated in the other chapters of this volume. Our purpose in this chapter is to address how IR FPA technology could be combined with the synchrotron source to advance IR spectroscopic imaging in ways that would prove quite difficult with a conventional thermal source. To address this question, we will need to understand the detailed nature of the synchrotron IR source, the optical... 

Chemical methods of material processing were known for years, existing in parallel with physical and other methods of film deposition. Recent advances in electron microscopy and scanning nanoprobe microscopy (STM, ATM) have revealed that some of the materials produced by the chemical methods have distinctive nanocrystalline structure. Furthermore, due to the achievements of colloid chemistry in the last 20 years, a large variety of colloid nanoparticles have become available for film deposition. This has stimulated great interest in further development of chemical methods as cost-effective alternatives to such physical methods as thermal evaporation magnetron sputtering chemical and physical vapor deposition (CVD, PVD) and molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). 

On the other hand, researchers from the area of materials were moving fast. A number of new methodologies to characterize macromolecules were developed in the last decade. Advanced techniques address molecular weight determination, molecular and structural characterization by spectroscopic techniques, morphology and structural characterization by miCToscopy and diffraction, thermal analysis, in addition to techniques such as atomic force microscopy, and circular dichroism, XPS, miCTo-TT lR, MALDI-TOFF, NMR, micro-CT, among others. 

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