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Scientific Profile
The Department of Nanoscopy deals with the development and application of marker-free spectroscopic methods for the analysis of chemically and biologically relevant systems on the nanometer scale. In experiments and theoretical considerations, the understanding of the extreme spatial resolution of the methods used in the optical near field (mainly the tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy - TERS) shall be applied and understood. The research addresses the following topics:
- Deepening the understanding of the detected spatial resolution in the near field
- Investigation of molecule-molecule interactions
- Nanoscale Transient Absorption
- High spatial resolution chemical structure analysis of (bio-)polymers
Schematic TERS measurements on protein fibrils.
Nearfield interaction between silver atom and adenine molecule
Contacted atomically flat gold cristals
Research Topics
- Computer-aided modeling of plasmon near-field probes
- Time-resolved nanoscale spectroscopy
- High spatial resolution bio-spectroscopy
- (Plasmon-) catalyzed reactions
- Development and optimization of optical near-field spectroscopy
The near-field optical techniques in the Nanoscopy Research Department are used for the chemical structural analysis of nanoscale objects. The high spatial resolution and sensitivity of TERS enables marker-free, non-destructive analysis of sample surfaces.
Areas of application
- Investigation of membranes, protein structures and nucleic acids
- Implementation of photoinduced force microscopy (PiFM) in near-field spectroscopy
- Development of robust near-field optical probes
- Characterization of block copolymers
