Date added: 2025-09-25
The 35th Seminar of Advanced Materials Center
We cordially invite you to the 35th seminar of the Advanced Materials Center, which will take place on October 10th, 2025 (Friday) at 1:15 p.m. in NE 140 (building 42, ETI B).
Dr. Adrian Cernescu from the company attocube systems GmbH (Munich, Germany) will present a lecture entitled "s-SNOM technology and applications for nanoscale analytics".
After the seminar, we traditionally invite you for pizza!
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Abstract:
"s-SNOM technology and applications for nanoscale analytics"
Scanning Near-field Optical Microscopy (s-SNOM) is a scanning probe approach to optical microscopy and spectroscopy bypassing the diffraction limit of light to achieve a spatial resolution below 10 nanometer. s-SNOM employs the strong confinement of light at the apex of a sharp metallic AFM tip to create a nanoscale optical hot-spot. Analyzing the scattered light from the tip enables the extraction of the optical properties (absorption, reflectivity) of the sample directly below the tip and yields nanoscale optical spectra simultaneous to mechanical properties.
Use of material-selective frequencies in the mid-IR spectral range can be exploited to image polariton propagation in 2D materials, fully characterize thin films, polymer blends or phase change materials with nanometer-scale domains. Quantification of free-carrier concentration and carrier mobility in doped semiconductor nanowires, or study energy storage or corroded materialsis achieved by nanoIR near-field optical imaging.
A broad range of applications of the s-SNOM technology for 2D materials, inorganics and biomaterials research, will be presented.
Imaging of a 10 nm thin PEO monolayer at 1123 cm-1 (asy. C-O-C stretching) shows self-assembled nano-structures and areas of different material thickness. High contrast absorption images allow to clearly distinguish between mono- and bilayer film areas.