LUXEMBOURG-SUPER MICROSCOPE Super-resolution analysis tool built by Luxembourg scientists

Record ID: 136141

  • Title: LUXEMBOURG-SUPER MICROSCOPE Super-resolution analysis tool built by Luxembourg scientists
  • Date: 19th October 2015
  • Summary: SCREEN WITH IMAGE OF SPECIALLY DESIGNED PROTOTYPE SPECTROMETER WIDE OF DOWSETT AND COLLEAGUE DISCUSSING THE NEXT GENERATION PROTOTYPE SPECTROMETER CLOSE OF IMAGE OF PROTOTYPE SPECTROMETER ON SCREEN MORE OF DOWSETT AND COLLEAGUE / PAN TO SCREEN
  • Embargoed: 3rd November 2015 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Luxembourg
  • Country: Luxembourg
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVAA9RPKYGP97EUBO5SJ7DOBO36B
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: Scientists in Luxembourg say they've developed an imaging instrument with the highest resolution in the world. They say it can produce images with a resolution of just 0.5 nanometers (nm) or 0.0000000005 metres - that's a hundred-thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair.
    At the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) they've combined the immense microscopic and analytical powers of two separate scientific instruments to build a tool that they say has implications in many areas of research.
    Dr. David Dowsett, a senior researcher in LIST's Materials Research and Technology (MRT) department, led the team that designed and built the first prototype. They took an ORION NanoFab scanning helium ion microscope and adapted it to be used as an imaging Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (SIMS) instrument by adding a specially designed prototype spectrometer. This has given them a combination of very high resolution microscope images and very sensitive chemical mapping capabilities.
    "A human hair is about 50 to 100 microns in diameter. The resolution of our microscope images is half a nanometer and the resolution of our SIMS images is about 10 nanometers. So, that's about 10,000-100,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair," Dowsett told Reuters, adding that the resolution of their instrument was "significantly better" than the best SIMS commercially available.
    The semiconductor, Lithium ion battery, and medical industries are just a few examples of where the precision tool has the potential to be a real asset.
    It's also attracting attention from cosmetic companies for its ability to analyse the effectiveness of shampoo and other cosmetics.
    "So when they say 'this is the science bit' - that's actually us. We've previously worked for one of the big pharmaceutical companies, looking at whether their shampoo really penetrates into the hair," said Dowsett.
    "We can make a microscope image of the hair with very, very high resolution. But we can also analyse the hair as well to see whether the shampoo, for example, penetrates just onto the outside or to see how deeply it's penetrated. Previously we had to do this in two separate instruments a electron microscope and a SIMS. Now with this new development we can do both in one machine which makes everything much simpler and faster."
    The microscope's ability to image biological cells could also mean it plays a vital role in the improvement and development of new medicine, according to the researchers.
    "Nanoparticles are being investigated as a new kind of very precise drug delivery mechanism. With our combined instrument we can, in principle follow, these nanoparticles and see if they have been uptaken into, for example, human cells. We could also see whether or not a labelled drug is present within the cell, in the same place as the nanoparticle; so we can really start to test whether a delivery system is effective. That's the kind of application that we're looking into," added Dowsett.
    Dowsett and his team are now working on an improved version of the device and investigating possibilities to commercialise the development.
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