New procedure for better thermoplastics

New insights thanks to nano imaging and spectroscopy at the IRIS beamline of BESSY II

06-Nov-2024 - Bio-based thermoplastics are produced from renewable organic materials and can be recycled after use. Their resilience can be improved by blending bio-based thermoplastics with other thermoplastics. However, the interface between the materials in these blends sometimes requires enhancement to ...

Researchers can measure distances in molecules optically

MINFLUX microscopy allows the determination of distances within biomolecules using an optical microscope

15-Oct-2024 - A team led by physicists Steffen Sahl and Stefan Hell at the Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences in Göttingen and the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg has succeeded in measuring distances within biomolecules using a light microscope, down to one nanometer ...

More than microscopes can show

Computer simulations visualize how an essential stem cell protein opens wrapped DNA

23-Sep-2022 - A key protein for converting adult stem cells into cells that resemble embryonic stem cells has been visualized in unprecedented detail by an international team of researchers around Hans Schöler and Vlad Cojocaru of the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine in Münster. By combing ...

Frequency-domain STED microscopy for selective background noise suppression

Novel method suppresses background noise in STED microscopy selectively and effectively, with potential for integration into other dual-beam point-scanning techniques

08-Jul-2022 - Nanoscopy describes the ability to see beyond the generally accepted optical limit of 200–300 nm. Stimulated emission depletion (STED) microscopy, developed by Stefan W. Hell and Jan Wichmann in 1994, and experimentally demonstrated by Hell and Thomas Klar in 1999, is a superresolution technique ...

Social Distancing on the Nanoscale

New contact-free nanoscopy concept

17-May-2021 - A team of physicists from Germany, the US and the UK managed to observe the motion of electrons from one atomically thin layer into an adjacent one with nanoscale spatial resolution. The new contact-free nanoscopy concept, which shows great potential for investigations into conducting, ...

Dissecting protein assemblies

New molecular details from mitochondria

14-Aug-2020 - Super-resolution MINFLUX nanoscopy, developed by Nobel laureate Stefan Hell and his team, is able to discern fluorescent molecules that are only a few nanometers apart. In an initial application of this technique to cell biology, researchers led by Stefan Hell and Stefan Jakobs have now optically ...

Fiber-optic probe can see molecular bonds

Pointing the new nanoscopy tool like a Harry Potter wand reveals a high-resolution image of molecules

12-Jun-2019 - In "Avengers: Endgame," Tony Stark warned Scott Lang that sending him into the quantum realm and bringing him back would be a "billion-to-one cosmic fluke." In reality, shrinking a light beam to a nanometer-sized point to spy on quantum-scale light-matter interactions and retrieving the ...

Quantum nanoscope

Seeing electrons surfing the waves of light on graphene

09-Jun-2017 - Researchers have studied how light can be used to “see” the quantum nature of an electronic material. They managed to do that by capturing light in a net of carbon atoms and slowing down light it down so that it moves almost as slow as the electrons in the graphene. Then something special ...

Chip-based nanoscopy: Microscopy in HD quality

27-Apr-2017 - This information can be used to produce images with a resolution of about 20 to 30 nanometres, and thereby ten times that of conventional light microscopy. Until now, this method has required the use of expensive special instruments. Bielefeld University and the University of Tromsø have filed a ...

Camera for the Nano-Cosmos

12-Aug-2015 - To gain even deeper insights into the smallest of worlds, the thresholds of microscopy must be expanded further. Scientists at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) and the TU Dresden, in cooperation with the Freie Universität Berlin, have succeeded in combining two established ...