10 ACUMEN • SPRING 2022 Big discoveries often take place at levels too small to see with a regular microscope that has a limit on spatial resolution. Chemist Xiaoji Xu and his team invent new spectroscopic microscopy at levels better than the optical diffraction limit to study macromolecules, two-dimensional materials, and nanostructures in order to interpret their chemical, electrical, and mechanical properties, looking for advances at the nanoscale. The Xu lab develops new methods and instruments for chemical measurement and imaging with better than 10 nanometer spatial resolution. They employ two infrared nanoscale imaging methods invented by Xu—peak force infrared (PFIR) microscopy and peak force scatteringtype near-field optical microscopy (PF-SNOM). These techniques allow researchers to study previously unreachable nanoscale objects with multimodal spectroscopic information close to the lower limit of spatial scale. His group also recently invented the pulsed force Kelvin probe No Small Matter ROBERT N I CHOLS Xiaoji Xu develops new methods and instruments for chemical measurement and imaging at the nanoscale PHOTOS BY DOUGLAS BENEDICT
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTA0OTQ5OA==