Visible light microscopy

Microscopy Visible light, ultraviolet, ionizing radiationa All Delly (1988) Pluta (1989)... 

Whereas in Optical microscopy visible light is used to interact with a specimen by... 

While the spatial resolution in classical microscopy is limited to approximately X/2, where X is the optical wavelength (tlie so-called Abbe Limit [194], -0.2 pm with visible light), SNOM breaks through this barrier by monitoring the evanescent waves (of high spatial frequency) which arise following interaction with an... 

X-Ray Microscopy. Because of the short wavelength of x-rays, they have, for nearly 100 years, held out the hope of being utilized in order to significantly lower the diffraction limit of resolution when visible light is used. The difficulties of focusing x-rays and the relative weakness of x-ray sources have, until recently, fmstrated efforts to teach that goal (25). 

In order to get the pore system of zeolites available for adsorption and catalysis the template molecules have to be removed. This is generally done by calcination in air at temperatures up to 500 °C. A careful study (ref. 12) of the calcination of as-synthesized TPA-containing MFI-type single crystals by infrared spectroscopy and visible light microscopy showed that quat decomposition sets in around 350 °C. Sometimes special techniques are required, e.g. heating in an ammonia atmosphere (ref. 13) in the case of B-MFI (boron instead of aluminum present) to prevent loss of crystallinity of the zeolite during template quat removal. 

Seeing the surface of a catalyst, preferably in atomic detail, is the ideal of every catalytic chemist. Unfortunately, optical microscopy is of no use for achieving this, simply because the rather long wavelength of visible light (a few hundred nanometers) does not enable features smaller than about one micrometer to be detected. Electron beams offer better opportunities. Development over the past 40 years has resulted in electron microscopes which routinely achieve magnifications on the order of one million times and reveal details with a resolution of about 0.1 nm [1], The technique has become very popular in catalysis, and several reviews offer a good overview of what electron microscopy and related techniques tell us about a catalyst 12-6],... 

In a more simple and cheap way, silver clusters can be prepared in aqueous solutions of commercially available polyelectrolytes, such as poly(methacrylic acid) (PM A A) by photo activation using visible light [20] or UV light [29]. Ras et al. found that photoactivation with visible light results in fluorescent silver cluster solutions without any noticeable silver nanoparticle impurities, as seen in electron microscopy and from the absence of plasmon absorption bands near 400 nm (F = 5-6%). It was seen that using PMAA in its acidic form, different ratios Ag+ MAA (0.15 1-3 1) lead to different emission bands, as discussed in the next section (Fig. 12) [20]. When solutions of PMAA in its sodium form and silver salt were reduced with UV light (365 nm, 8 W), silver nanoclusters were obtained with emission band centered at 620 nm and [Pg.322]

Transmission electron microscopy is analogous to light microscopy, with visible light replaced by a beam of electrons produced by a heated metal filament, and glass lenses replaced by electromagnetic coils to focus the beam. An image of the sample is projected onto a fluorescent screen or, for a permanent record, onto film or a CCD detector (Chapter 4, Section ni.C). Alternatively, an image of the sample s diffraction pattern can be projected onto the detectors. 

One major problem of all these techniques is the sensitivity in the parameter selected to detect the presence of inhomogeneities. With visible light for example, inhomogeneous samples can appear transparent if the difference in the refractive index between the phases is less than 0.01. Staining (in the case of transmission electron microscopy, TEM), or chemical etching (in the case of scanning electron microscopy, SEM), can be helpful in revealing the structure. 

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