Nanometer Resolution

Also a good interface resolution is obtained with transmission electron microscopy (TEM), where, however, a dedicated sample preparation and treatment are necessary to achieve nanometer resolution and suitable contrast [64]. Thus the... 

Betzig E, Patterson GH, Sougrat R, Lindwasser OW, Olenych S, Bonifacino JS, Davidson MW, Lippincott-Schwartz J, Hess FIF (2006) Imaging intracellular fluorescent proteins at nanometer resolution. Science 313 1642-1645... 

The already critical need for molecular-scale compositional mapping will increase as more complex structures are assembled. Currently, electron microscopy, scanning probe microscopy (SPM) and fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) are the only methods that routinely provide nanometer resolution. 

Detonations at Nanometer Resolution using Molecular Dynamics. 

While PMMA is an attractive material because of its resolution characteristics, its sensitivity to radiation induced degradation is low, and its dry-etching characteristics are poor. The e-beam and deep-UV exposure doses for PMMA are —100 nC cm-2 (38) and >1 Jem-2 (40), respectively. The fact that nanometer resolution is readily achieved in this material has, however, prompted many researchers to examine substituted systems in attempts to effect improved performance. 

SPM encompasses a group of surface-detection techniques that include AFM and scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) that allow the topographic profiling of surfaces. SPM techniques investigate only the outermost few atomic layers of the surface with nanometer resolutions and at times atomic-level resolution. 

The AFM maps the topography of a substrate by monitoring the interaction force between the sample and a sharp tip attached to the end of a cantilever so that the morphology of the surface of the studied sample can be reproduced at nanometer resolution (Fig. 1.8). Some works can be found in literature, reporting studies in which AFM has been applied to the examination of art and archaeological objects [55]. 

Hyperbranched polyacetylenes were prepared by Tang et aL (2), which were curable into thermosets by heat or irradiation to provide patterns with nanometer resolution and were used in ceramics. 

Contact SFM can be performed at much lower forces in vacuum than in air. Due to elimination of the thin water layer, also operation in non-contact mode became much more stable at distances near to the surface. UHV-SFM in contact mode allows easily nanometer resolution and even atomic-scale features could be resolved by non-contact SFM using a special feedback scheme [98,172]. Thus, UHV conditions strongly advance non-destructive imaging of soft surfaces and make the measurements more reproducible and quantitative. 

Nonlinear dielectric imaging with sub- nanometer resolution... 

First, we briefly describe the theory for detecting polarization. Precise descriptions of the principle of the microscope have been reported elsewhere (see [3,4]). We also report the results of the imaging of the ferroelectric domains in single crystals and in thin films using the sndm. Especially in the pzt thin film measurement, we succeeded to obtain a domain image with a sub-nanometer resolution. 

The strip shape domain pattern is seen in Figure 16.5. Figure 16.5 (b) is a cross sectional image taken along line A-A in Figure 16.5 (a). From the distance between the clearly distinguishable structures in the image, it is apparent that sndm has sub-nanometer resolution. 

Figure 10.20 shows a printed pattern that has nanometer resolution [11]. In this case a hard stamp of GaAs, formed by electron beam lithography and etching, was used. The metal coating consisted of a bilayer of Au (20 nm) and Ti (5 nm). The... 

One such approach has recently been developed and shown to enable high-resolution NSOM fluorescence and force measurements on viable cultured human arterial smooth muscle (HASM) cells under buffered conditions [28,29], This approach takes advantage of the nanofabrication capabilities of focused ion beam (FIB) milling to sculpt a light delivery structure into the end of a conventional AFM probe. The FIB technique, which utilizes a focused beam of gallium ions to mill samples with nanometer resolution, was first used by van Hulst and co-workers to modify conventional NSOM probes [30]. They demonstrated an improvement in single molecule fluorescence measurements using... 

An imaging mode called "wet-STEM" recently developed in ESEM, and schematically presented in Figure 3.17, allows the observation of nano-objects suspended in a liquid phase, with a few nanometers resolution (87). The idea behind this technique is simply to perform STEM-in-SEM, that is SEM in transmission mode, in an environmental SEM, in the wet state. The ESEM is interesting for the ability to keep samples wet or liquid, and the STEM mode results in high contrast, resolution and thickness of transparency. 

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