(CN) — New nanotechnology created by the Australian National University can access light sources that are unseeable by the human eye and detect objects smaller than conventional microscopes can.
Cameras and other technologies already unveil low-frequency infra-red and high-frequency ultraviolet lights, but the Australian National University technology, developed in collaboration with the University of Brescia, the University of Arizona, and Korea University, can detect the very high frequencies of light called extreme-ultraviolet.
The nanotech increases light frequencies that other technologies see by up to seven times with 10 times the resolution, according to a study published in Science Advances Wednesday.
By using light to peer at objects thousands of times smaller than a human hair, co-author Dr. Sergey Kruk of Australian National university said via email that the nanotech avoids the risk of damaging samples the way electron microscopes do.
“Electrons are particles that have both an electric charge and mass — all while bombarding the sample at a considerable speed,” said Kruk. “Light beam, while carrying some energy, has neither mass nor charge, which mitigates some of the damage problems.”
And unlike electron microscopes, Kruk said the nanotech does not require putting samples — particularly at-risk living samples — in a vacuum where they might deteriorate.
“High-frequency light can propagate much better through gases at ambient pressures and temperatures as long as its frequency stays away from a specific set of frequencies at which gases absorb light,” said Kruk. “A suitable atmosphere for deep-ultraviolet and even for the upper range of extreme-ultraviolet could be as unsophisticated as 100% nitrogen. Given that the air on Earth is about 78% nitrogen anyhow, going into a 100% nitrogen environment is a less radical change of the environment in comparison to vacuum.”
Studying extremely small objects while preserving the samples may benefit the medical field, as the study says that scientists can better understand and fight certain diseases and health conditions if they can study the inner structures of cells and individual viruses.
Kruk said this nanotech could also help the semiconductor industry diagnose computer chip features nearly one billionth of a meter in size.
“Unlike medical applications, such diagnostics do not necessarily need to ‘see’ a human-comprehensible image of the sample, but it relies on obtaining an optical signal that carries information about possible fabrication imperfections,” said Kruk. “Light with higher frequency would carry more information about smaller imperfections happening during the fabrication flow.”
Developing the nanotech did not come without challenges. Kruk said the main one involved generating higher frequency light.
“By default, the efficiency of this is so low that we just cannot detect any new light coming out,” said Kruk. “Our efforts were towards careful engineering of the exact geometry of those small particles at the nanometer-scale so that they resonate with the incoming light beam. Another challenge was to design and implement pre-conditioning of the incoming beam of light so that it may interact with the particle’s resonance. These efforts made it possible to observe generations of light with higher frequencies even from a single tiny particle.”
Kruk said this study demonstrates the fundamental side of physics to the benefit of future studies.
“We hope the pursuit of this emerging direction of research will be increasing internationally, and the focus will be moving beyond fundamental principles towards applied research and development of such light sources for specific applications. As the next milestone, I hope to see collaborative projects with medical and biological researchers and with researchers of semiconductor foundries,” Kruk said.
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