Researchers explore new depths in infrared nanospectroscopy
Researchers from the Nanooptics Group at CIC nanoGUNE (San Sebastian) demonstrate that nanoscale infrared imaging—which is established as a surface-sensitive technique—can be employed for chemical nanoidentification of materials that are located up to 100 nm below a surface. The results further show that the infrared signatures of thin surface layers differ from that of subsurface layers of the same material, which can be exploited to distinguish the two cases. The findings, recently published in Nature Communications, push the technique one important step further to quantitative chemometrics at the nanoscale in three dimensions.
Optical spectroscopy with infrared light, such as Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, allows for chemical identification of organic and inorganic materials. The smallest objects which can be distinguished with conventional FTIR microscopes have sizes on the micrometer-scale. Scientists at CIC nanoGUNE (San Sebastian), however, employed nano-FTIR to resolve objects, which can be as small as a few nanometres.
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