Moore Foundation grantees at JILA, a joint institute of the University of Colorado, Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, have developed a new technique to image tiny structures too small to be seen with visible light microscopes. Remarkably, this technique doesn't require any optical components such as lenses or mirrors.
Led by Margaret Murnane, a professor of physics at CU Boulder and investigator through the foundation's Emergent Phenomena in Quantum Physics initiative, the team used a technique called extreme ultraviolet light (EUV) imaging, which leverages coherent beams of extreme ultraviolet light to examine nanoscale materials.
The wavelength from extreme ultraviolet light is about 13.5 nanometers, which is about 50 times shorter than the wavelength of visible light. With this shorter wavelength, EUV imaging can provide information about chemical composition and structure of a nanomaterial without causing damage. This feature is a crucial step toward understanding nanoscale electronic devices as well as biological materials.
The team also surpassed results typically available only at enormous and expensive research facilities, such as synchrotrons, by using only tabletop lasers and imaging systems. As a result, this new technique could become a widely accessible tool for both imaging and designing the next generation of nanoscale devices.
The team's findings were published recently in the journal Nature Photonics.
Murnane is a recent recipient of the Optical Society of America's prestigious Frederic Ives Medal/Quinn Prize and has made significant contributions to the field of optical physics.
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