Related papers: Measurement of Nanoscale Interfacial Contact Area …
Much work over the last 25 years has demonstrated that the interface-specific, alloptical technique, vibrational sum frequency generation (v-SFG) spectroscopy, is often uniquely capable of characterizing the structure and dynamics of…
Molecular self-assembly, the function of biomembranes, and the performance of organic solar cells rely on molecular interactions on the nanoscale. The understanding and design of such intrinsic or engineered heterogeneous functional soft…
Understanding the contact between solid surfaces is a long standing problem which has a strong impact on the physics of many processes such as adhesion, friction, lubrication and wear. Experimentally, the investigation of solid/solid…
The structures of interfaces of nano- and microscale objects in aqueous solution are important for a wide variety of physical, chemical and biological processes. Vibrational sum frequency scattering has emerged as a useful and unique probe…
IR spectroscopy has been widely used for chemical identification and quantitative analysis of reactions occurring in a specific time and space domains by measuring an average signal of the entire system1. Achieving IR measurements with…
Atomic Force Microscopy - Infrared (AFM-IR) spectroscopy allows spectroscopic studies in the mid-infrared spectral region with a spatial resolution better than 50 nm. We show that the high spatial resolution can be used to perform…
Understanding the molecular-level structure and dynamics of ice surfaces is crucial for deciphering several chemical, physical, and atmospheric processes. Vibrational sum-frequency generation (SFG) spectroscopy is the most prominent tool…
We measure the resonance line shape of atomic vapor layers with nanoscale thickness confined between two sapphire windows. The measurement is performed by scanning a probe laser through resonance and collecting the scattered light. The line…
Researchers from a broad spectrum of scientific and engineering disciplines are increasingly using near-field infrared spectroscopic techniques to characterize materials nondestructively and with nanoscale spatial resolution. However,…
Sum-frequency generation (SFG) is a powerful second-order nonlinear spectroscopic technique that provides detailed insights into molecular structures and absolute orientations at surfaces and interfaces. However, conventional SFG based on…
Electromagnetic interaction between a sub-wavelength particle (the `probe') and a material surface (the `sample') is studied theoretically. The interaction is shown to be governed by a series of resonances corresponding to surface polariton…
Modern interfacial science is increasingly multi-disciplinary. Unique insight into interfacial interactions requires new multimodal techniques for interrogating surfaces with simultaneous complementary physical and chemical measurements. We…
Our current understanding of the structure and dynamics of aqueous interfaces at the molecular level has grown substantially in the last few decades due to the continuous development of surface-specific spectroscopies, such as vibrational…
Moving the detection wavelength in vibrational sum-frequency generation (VSFG) spectroscopy to the near-infrared (> 700 nm) can potentially enable the study of molecular interfaces absorbing in the visible and give access to buried…
Understanding light-matter interaction at the nanoscale requires probing the optical properties of matter at the individual nano-absorber level. To this end, we have developed a nanomechanical photothermal sensing platform that can be used…
Atomic Force Microscopy - Infrared (AFM-IR) has emerged as a useful technique for measuring absorption spectra with spatial resolution better than the optical diffraction limit. The technique relies on the movement of a probe for atomic…
We present an analytical description and an experimental realization of interscale mixing microscopy, a diffraction-based imaging technique that is capable of detecting wavelength/10 objects in far-field measurements with both coherent and…
We use molecular simulations to study the nonadhesive and adhesive atomic-scale contact of rough spheres with radii ranging from nanometers to micrometers over more than ten orders of magnitude in applied normal load. At the lowest loads,…
Vibrational sum- and difference-frequency generation (SFG and DFG) spectroscopy probes the nonlinear response of interfaces at mid-infrared (MIR) wavelengths while detecting upconverted signals in the visible. Recent work has moved from…
The contrast formation mechanism in Nanoscale Infrared Spectroscopy (Nano-IR or AFM-IR) is analyzed for the boundary between two layers with different light absorption, thermal and elastic parameters. Analytical results derived in the…