1. MATERIAL SCIENCE HONORS
Microscopy

2. Optical Magnification
Early attempts at magnification involved the use of lenses.

3. Optical Magnification
Lenses would bend the rays of light creating a magnified image.

4. Early Optical Microscope

5. Modern Optical Microscope
Today, we are limited to 1000X and a resolution of 0.2 micrometers.

6. Limitations
Images have astigmatism. When waves that approach the image plane from different directions carry their focus from different object planes.

7. Limitations
Astigmation and focusing have been challenges faced by most microscopists.

8. Charles Oatley

9. Electron Magnification
He created a microscope that created magnified images using electrons instead of light.

10. The SEM is an incredible tool for seeing the unseen world.

11. Insect Wing (12X)

12. Insect Wing (3000X)
The SEM can create 3-dimensional images at a much higher magnification that any optical microscope.

13. Iguana Scales (20X)

14. Iguana Scales (2300X)
Since the images are created without the use of light rays, they are in black and white.

15. The SEM vacuum

16. Sample Preparation
Samples have to be dried and prepared carefully to sustain the vacuum inside the SEM.

17. Sputter Coater
A sputter coater is used to coat the specimen with a very thin layer of gold or iridium.

18. This enables the specimen to conduct electricity.
Finished Specimen
This enables the specimen to conduct electricity.

19. Sample Chamber
The sample is placed inside the SEM’s vacuum column inside an air-tight door. Air is then pumped out of the column.

20. The Electron Source

21. How the SEM works

22. As the electron beam hits each spot on the sample, secondary electrons are knocked loose from its surface. A detector counts these electrons and sends the signals to an amplifier.

23. The final image is built up from the number of electrons emitted from each spot on the sample.

24. ZnO nanostructures on an indium oxide coated glass.

25. What am I?

26. Fractured Paper Clip

27. What am I?

28. Needle & Thread

29. What am I?

30. Human Hair Root

31. What am I?

32. Brine Shrimp Eggs (150X)

33. What am I?

34. Daisy

35. What am I?

36. Fish Gill

37. The Leg of a Fly

38. Compact Disk

39. E Coli

40. Paper

41. Penny Scratch

42. Human Hair

43. Last one ! What am I?

44. Algae

45. Atomic Force Microscope
AFM is often called the "Eye of Nanotechnology".

46. Cantilever A cantilever beam is shaped much like a diving board.
The tip is positioned at the end of the cantilever.

47. Cantilever
The AFM works by scanning a fine ceramic or semiconductor tip over a surface

48. As the tip travels across the surface of a sample, it is repelled by or attracted to the surface. This causes the cantilever to deflect.

49. The magnitude of the deflection is captured by a laser that reflects at an oblique angle from the very end of the cantilever.

52. A plot of the laser deflection versus tip position on the sample surface provides the resolution of the hills and valleys that constitute the topography of the surface.

53. The AFM can work with the tip touching the sample (contact mode).

54. The AFM can work with the tip can tap across the surface (tapping mode) much like the cane of a blind person.

55. Lab: AFM-The Inside Story

56. Lab: AFM-The Inside Story
Data Chart
Beanie Baby
Diagram
Prince
Claude
Gracy
Scorch
Jester
Morrie
Pattie
Crunch
Inky
Ecko

57. Applications
(a–e)
The AFM has assisted engineers and biologists from Duke University and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in their understanding of mechanical processes within the living cell.

58. Applications
Progressive images from atomic force microscopy show the compaction of DNA in yeast caused by a protein called AbF2.

59. P&G recently developed a new formula with additives to make the conditioner coat the hair evenly.

60. Usually, hair conditioners typically do not evenly cover the entire hair shaft. Tests found that their new conditioner did coat hair more evenly. They examined healthy and damaged hairs under an AFM, and simulated everyday wear and tear.

61. Wole´

62. Macrophage

63. Skin Cancer
A flat red spot that is dry, rough or scaly.

64. Detection
Biopsy
Staining

65. Healthy Bone Cells
Bone Cancer Cells

66. Surgery
Chemotherapy
Radiation Therapy

68. There are over 10 trillion cells in the human body (200 types).

69. Cell Membrane

74. What happens when the object, like a virus or bacteria, is too small to be observed by laser light?
Researchers at the University of Cornell have solved the problem by combining a NEMS device to a MEMS probe that in turn would be large enough for a laser readout.

75. Scanning Tunneling Microscope
Scanning tunneling microscopy is a technique developed in the eighties and allows imaging solid surfaces with unprecedented resolution. The operation of a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) is based on the so-called tunneling current, which starts to flow when a sharp tip approaches a conducting surface at a distance of approximately one nanometer. The tip is mounted on a piezoelectric tube, which allows tiny movements by applying a voltage at its electrodes. Thereby, the electronics of the STM system control the tip position in such a way that the tunneling current and, hence, the tip-surface distance is kept constant, while at the same time scanning a small area of the sample surface. This movement is recorded and can be displayed as an image of the surface topography. Under ideal circumstances, the individual atoms of a surface can be resolved and displayed.

76. Scanning Tunneling Microscope
Scanning tunneling microscopy is a technique developed in the eighties and allows imaging solid surfaces with unprecedented resolution. The operation of a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) is based on the so-called tunneling current, which starts to flow when a sharp tip approaches a conducting surface at a distance of approximately one nanometer. The tip is mounted on a piezoelectric tube, which allows tiny movements by applying a voltage at its electrodes. Thereby, the electronics of the STM system control the tip position in such a way that the tunneling current and, hence, the tip-surface distance is kept constant, while at the same time scanning a small area of the sample surface. This movement is recorded and can be displayed as an image of the surface topography. Under ideal circumstances, the individual atoms of a surface can be resolved and displayed.

77. Scanning Tunneling Microscope
It should be noted, however, that STM images not only display the geometric structure of the surface, but also depend on the electronic density of states of the sample, as well as on special tip-sample interaction mechanisms which are not fully understood yet.

78. Scanning Electron Microscope
Helium Ion Microscope
This new microscope technology uses helium ions to generate the signal used to image extremely small objects, a technique analogous to the scanning electron microscope, which was first introduced commercially in the 1960s. Paradoxically, although helium ions are far larger than electrons, they can provide higher resolution images with higher contrast. The depth of field is much better with the new technology too, so more of the image is in focus. An image of gold atoms on tin from a state-of-the-art scanning electron microscope (left) has relatively poor depth of field-only parts of the image are in sharp focus. By contrast, the entire image from a helium ion microscope image (right) is sharp and clear. NIST researchers are studying helium ion microscopes to improve measurements at the nanoscale that are important to the semiconductor and nanomanufacturing industries.
Scanning Electron Microscope
Helium Ion Microscope

79. “Nanobama”
Microscopic faces of U.S. President-elect Barack Obama made using nanotechnology, and imaged using a scanning electron microscope. Each face consists of millions of vertically-aligned carbon nanotubes, grown by a high temperature chemical reaction. Each face contains millions of parallel nanotubes, standing vertically on the substrate like a forest of trees. The nanobama faces are approximately 0.5 millimeter wide, or about ten times the width of a human hair.

80. Nano-Origami
A team of M.I.T. researchers led by George Barbastathis, associate professor of mechanical engineering, is developing the basic principles of "nano-origami," a new technique that allows engineers to fold nanoscale materials into simple 3-D structures. The tiny folded materials could be used as motors and capacitors, potentially leading to better computer memory storage, faster microprocessors and new nanophotonic devices.

81. World’s Smallest Letters
Stanford researchers have reclaimed bragging rights for creating the world's smallest writing, a distinction the university first gained in 1985 and lost in How small is the writing? The letters in the words are assembled from subatomic sized bits as small as 0.3 nanometers, or roughly one third of a billionth of a meter.
The researchers encoded the letters "S" and "U" (as in Stanford University) within the interference patterns formed by quantum electron waves on the surface of a sliver of copper. The wave patterns even project a tiny hologram of the data, which can be viewed with a powerful microscope.

82. Atomic Mirror
A research team has created the “quantum stabilized atom mirror,” the smoothest surface ever, according to the researchers. The mirror resembles a curved wafer. It is made up of a thin silicon crystal with a thickness of 50 microns, and covered with a very fine layer of lead, 1 or 2 nanometres thick. To study the reflection on this metal, the scientists used helium atoms. Until now mirrors made solely from silicon reflected 1% of helium atoms, but by adding the layer of lead they have managed to achieve a reflection of up to 67%. This is already being used in the design of the world's first atomic microscope.

83. Stimulated Raman Scattering (SRS)
The key to this new chemical imaging technique is the use of two lasers with different frequencies. Researchers visualize samples by tuning the laser frequencies to match the vibrational frequency of a specific chemical bond. Each type of molecule within a sample, including nutrients or drugs, is detectable at a unique frequency. By combining sample data collected at numerous frequencies, researchers can produce a high-resolution 3D image of the sample. SRS microscopy represents a big gain in biomedical imaging because it avoids labor-intensive sample preparation and autofluorescence, or "background noise", associated with traditional fluorescence microscopy.
SRS imaging will facilitate progress in many fields. "Applications of SRS imaging range from mapping distribution of small metabolite and drug molecules in cells and tissues to medical diagnosis of cancer.

84. Nanoparticles Aid Microscope Views
A widely used method is known as laser or fluorescence microscopy, in which a laser is used to make a specimen emit light, either because the specimen does so naturally or because it has been injected or "labeled" with fluorescent dye. The trouble is that such dyes – when excited by laser light – generate toxic chemicals that kill living cells. University of Utah physicists and chemists developed a new method that uses a mirror of tiny silver "nanoparticles" so microscopes can reveal the internal structure of nearly opaque biological materials like bone, tumor cells and the iridescent green scales of the so-called "photonic beetle. “The new method developed by Lupton and colleagues is a variation of fluorescence microscopy, but involves using an infrared laser to excite clusters of silver nanoparticles placed below the sample being studied. The particles form "plasmonic hotspots," which act as beacons, shooting intensely focused white light upward through the overlying sample.

85. Materials Science

86. Scientists in Israel are reporting the first simple and inexpensive method for building the large-scale networks of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT) needed for using these microscopic wisps in a future generation of faster, smaller, and more powerful computers and portable electronic devices.

87. Nano-Car
James Tour and coworkers at Rice University synthesized a molecular car with four carbon-based wheels that roll on axles made from linked carbon atoms. The nano-car's molecular wheels are 5,000 times smaller than a human cell. A powerful technique that allows viewing objects at the atomic level called scanning tunneling microscopy reveals the wheels roll perpendicular to the axles, rather than sliding about like a car on ice as the car moves back and forth on a surface.

88. Nano-Dragster
Researchers are reporting the development of a "nanodragster" that may speed the course toward development of a new generation of molecular machines. The nanoscale "vehicle" outperforms previous nano-sized vehicles, according to the authors. The new vehicle addresses some of the problems associated with previously reported nano-cars. The front end has a smaller axle and wheels made of special materials that roll easier. The rear wheels sport a longer axle but are still made of buckyballs, which provide strong surface grip. These changes result in a "nanodragster" that can operate at lower temperatures than a regular nanocar and possibly has has better agility.

89. Biology
Ant

90. Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS)

91. 1966

92. Fantastic Voyage Realized?
Single-molecule nano-vehicles synthesized by researchers at Rice University in Texas measure just 4x3 nanometers and have four carbon-based buckyball wheels connected to four independently rotating axles and an organic chemical chassis.

93. Microbots
Professor James Friend, leader of the research team at Monash University produced remote controlled miniature robots small enough to swim up arteries could save lives by reaching parts of the body, like a stroke-damaged cranial artery, that catheters have previously been unable to reach (because of the labyrinthine structure of the brain that catheters are too immobile to safely reach). With the right sensor equipment attached to the microbot motor, the surgeon’s view of, for example, a patient’s troubled artery can be enhanced and the ability to work remotely also increases the surgeon’s dexterity.

94. World’s Smallest Switch
During the research, Trouwborst developed a new method to organize gold atoms in such a way that a very tiny mechanical switch could be made with them: only a single gold atom forms the contact. In addition, Trouwborst constructed a new type of electronic switch of the same miniscule size. The enormous progress in information technology is mainly related to the fact that the electronic parts in computers are getting smaller and smaller. And smaller automatically means quicker and cheaper. In the past forty years, the number of transistors in a computer chip has doubled every two years. However, in ten years from now we will reach a physical limit, estimates Trouwborst. At this limit, the basic principles of the transistor do not longer work properly.

95. Zinc Oxide Nanowires
Researchers in Maryland report an advance toward making zinc oxide nanowires (shown) on an industrial scale. The study describes a new method in which zinc oxide nanowires are grown in the exact positions where nanodevices later will be fabricated, in a way that involves a minimum number of fabrication steps for industrial-scale fabrication of nanowire-based devices like ultra-sensitive sensors, light emitting diodes, and transistors for inexpensive, high-performance electronics products. 

97. “Cyborg” Beetle
University of Michigan on the Cyborg Beetle (see Fig), a beetle controlled like a radio-controlled airplane by implanting an integrated circuit (IC), antenna and other components in it. There were other papers dealing with controlling beetle flight, but the University of Michigan's paper surpassed the others in its level of completion.

98. The MEMS market for sensors will continue to grow, particularly for sensors with integrated signal processing, self-calibration, and self-test. However, a substantial portion of the MEMS market will be in non-sensing, actuator-enabled applications, such as scanners, fuel-injection systems, and mass data storage devices. Furthermore, because MEMS products will be embedded in larger, non-MEMS systems (e.g., printers, automobiles, biomedical diagnostics), the products will enable new and improved systems, with projected market value approaching $100 billion in the year 2000.

99. Chemistry
Iron Oxide molecules

100. Micro Chemo Mechanical Systems (MCMS)
David Gracias and colleagues from The University of Maryland developed chemically triggered microscopic devices that can manipulate small objects with precision. The main difference being that the tools are triggered by chemistry as opposed to electricity with BioMEMS.

101. Medicine

102. TiO2 Nanotubes make Good “Stents”
Vascular implants can cause inflammatory reactions, such as restenosis and thrombosis, inside the body. The implants cause endothelial cells (which line the inside of blood vessels) to grow in number and the cells begin to "stick" to the surface of the devices. Restenosis happens when vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs), which surround the endothelial layer in cells, proliferate. Thrombosis is caused by proliferation of the endothelial cells themselves. One way to overcome these problems is to use drug-eluting stents that inhibit VSMC growth, but such devices can cause thrombosis later on. Ideally, a stent should not prevent endothelial cells from moving about, and at the same time stop the growth of VSMCs. A research team has now found that stents made from TiO2 nanotubes might just be the ticket. They used a microarray analysis to compare how primary vascular cells grow on the flat nanotube surfaces. The results suggest that TiO2 nanotubes encourage endothelial cells to travel while inhibiting VSMC growth. This is the optimal type of response needed from vascular cells in response to implants, like stents.

103. “Killer” Paper
A material intended for use as a new food packaging material that helps preserve foods by fighting the bacteria that cause spoilage.

104. “Killer” Paper
The paper contains a coating of silver nanoparticles, which are powerful anti-bacterial agents.

105. Pediatric Brain Cancer
Childhood brain cancer is especially devastating because the developing brain is so sensitive to radiation, often used to treat cancer. Surgery to remove brain tumors is not always successful because the tumor's edges are hard to see, and furthermore, surgery is often avoided because of the danger of brain damage. By keeping out medications used against cancer, the blood-brain barrier adds yet another obstacle to treatment.

106. Originally invented these polymers for the Navy to coat ships and inhibit marine organisms from settling on the hull, scientists have found a way to make these coatings into really small particulates, or nanostructures, so they can circulate in the body. Think of these nanoparticles as tiny packages with internal compartments that can hold medicines and at the same time carry substances that can be scanned with medical imaging devices. The outside of the nanoparticles can be designed with "hooks" to bind them to cancer cells. The researchers expect that these "multitasking" nanoparticles will be able to highlight cancer cells and monitor the disease while the cancer-fighting drugs within them attack the cells. By playing with the size and composition of the nanoparticles, the researchers hope to enable the particles to slip across the blood-brain barrier.

107. “Eggshell & Yoke” Anticancer Nanomedicine
Like a chicken's egg, the structure has an outer shell that encloses a "yolk" that can be released from the shell.
In their experiments, the researchers used a yolk consisting of iron and platinum, the metal responsible for the activity of the widely used chemotherapeutic drug, cisplatin. Cultures of human cancer cells took up the nanostructures and the nanostructures released their yolks, which proved to have "exceptionally high toxicity" for the cancer cells.

108. “Gold”en Drug Delivery Systems
Using tiny gold particles and infrared light, MIT researchers have developed a drug-delivery system that allows multiple drugs to be released in a controlled fashion. The new technique takes advantage of the fact that when gold nanoparticles are exposed to infrared light, they melt and release drug payloads attached to their surfaces.
Nanoparticles of different shapes respond to different infrared wavelengths, so "just by controlling the infrared wavelength, we can choose the release time" for each drug, said Andy Wijaya, graduate student in chemical engineering and lead author of the paper.
The team built two different shapes of nanoparticles, which they call "nanobones" and "nanocapsules." Nanobones melt at light wavelengths of 1,100 nanometers, and nanocapsules at 800 nanometers.

109. Nanochemotherapy
C6-Ceramide

110. Cerasomes
Cerasomes, developed at Penn State College of Medicine, can target cancer cells very specifically and accurately, rather than affecting a larger area that includes healthy cells.

111. Ceramide is non-toxic to normal cells, putting them to sleep, while selectively killing cancer cells.

112. Nanotextured Implant Materials
Engineers from Brown and Purdue universities have found that simply changing the surface texture of implants can dramatically change the way cells colonize a wide variety of materials. Instead of using chemistry to fight the body’s response to such foreign materials, Thomas Webster, an associate professor of engineering, and Karen Haberstroh, an assistant professor of engineering, thought maybe they could use physical structure to allow the foreign materials to blend in better. Smoother is not better. The faster endothelial cells (green) form a single smooth layer, the less chance exposed metal will provoke an immune response. Samples examined after 1, 3 and 5 days (left to right) show better coverage on nanotextured titanium (bottom row) than on conventional microstructured titanium.

120. Synthetic nanoparticles are ubiquitous in today's world: either as an additive to building materials, whose properties they improve; in cosmetics, mainly in sun creams and toothpaste; or in foodstuffs, to thicken them or brighten their color. However, nano-safety research, i.e. knowledge of how nanoparticles interact with their environment and specifically with a living organism, is still largely in its infancy.