Energy Portrait: Capturing a Molecule's Moment of Excitement

30-Sep-2024 - Researchers at the University of Regensburg in collaboration with IBM Research Europe - Zurich have found a way to access excited states of single molecules and determine their energies. A very fundamental property of atoms and molecules are the energies, at which electrons can be added to or ...

The insulator unraveled

Scientists have uncovered the detailed structure of the aluminum oxide surface, a challenge that has baffled researchers for decades

18-Sep-2024 - Aluminum oxide (Al2O3), also known as alumina, corundum, sapphire, or ruby, is one of the best insulators used in a wide range of applications: in electronic components, as a support material for catalysts, or as a chemically resistant ceramic, to name a few. Knowledge of the precise arrangement ...

Observed live for the first time: photocatalysts switch off a virus

Whitening agent titanium dioxide kills viruses – now researchers see it at work at the nanoscale

02-Aug-2024 - An international research team led by DESY scientists has been able to observe for the first time how the whitening agent titanium dioxide inactivates viruses. Using various advanced methods, including measurements at the synchrotron light source PETRAIII, they were able to precisely reproduce ...

Exploring the Mouthfeel of Food with a Microscope

New Research Approach

31-May-2024 - A team led by Melanie Köhler and Veronika Somoza from the Leibniz-Institute for Food Systems Biology has presented a new research approach in the journal Nature Food. The perspectives article focuses on different ways to study the mouthfeel of food using atomic force microscopy to better ...

Combined microscopy technique catches light-driven polymers in the act

Researchers combine high-speed atomic force microscopy with a laser light source for real-time observation of azo-polymer films

13-Mar-2024 - Expanding our scientific understanding often comes down to getting as close a look as possible at what is happening. Now researchers from Japan have observed the nanoscale behavior of azo-polymer films while triggering them with laser light. In a study published last month in Nano Letters the ...

AI technique 'decodes' microscope images, overcoming fundamental limit

“We’ve given a proof-of-concept and shown how to use AI to significantly improve AFM images, but this work is only the beginning”

12-Mar-2024 - Atomic force microscopy, or AFM, is a widely used technique that can quantitatively mapmaterial surfaces in three dimensions, but its accuracy is limited by the size of the microscope’sprobe. A new AI technique overcomes this limitation and allows microscopes to resolve material features ...

Looking at the Sides of Molecules: Lateral force microscopy reveals previously unseen hydrogen atoms

The ability to directly observe hydrogen atoms marks a significant breakthrough and opening up new avenues for research and innovation

23-Jan-2024 - Researchers at the University of Regensburg and the Graz University of Technology have shown that hydrogen atoms at the sides of molecules lying on a surface can directly be seen. The study, published in the journal “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences”, describes that by looking ...

A novel microscope operates on the quantum state of single electrons

08-Dec-2023 - We, and everything around us consists of molecules. The molecules are so tiny that even a speck of dust contains countless of them. The more fascinating it is that nowadays it is routinely possible to precisely image such molecules with a microscope called atomic force microscope. It works quite ...

Ultra-long protein fibrils give clues on dementia risk

"AFM technology has the potential to complement conventional biomarker tests and improve the early detection of Alzheimer's"

12-May-2023 - During the course of Alzheimer's disease, protein fibrils appear in the spinal fluid of affected individuals. Empa researchers, together with the Department of Neurology at the Cantonal Hospital in St. Gallen, have now visualized the wide spectrum of protein aggregates from oligomers, ...

Electrocatalysis under the atomic force microscope

More insights with AFM

17-Mar-2023 - A further development in atomic force microscopy now makes it possible to simultaneously image the height profile of nanometre-fine structures as well as the electric current and the frictional force at solid-liquid interfaces. A team from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) and the Fritz Haber ...