The best is yet to come - material science and nanotechnology

New Materials and Nanomaterials

Nanotechnology builds the bridge across research fields as biology, chemistry, physics, and engineering. Thus, various well established analytical methods are applied in order to study, or modify the nano-cosmos, or finally to generate usable products.

Atomic force microscopy provides detailed information about sample surfaces at the nanoscale, and has become an important technology for research of nanomaterials, biomaterials, inorganics and composites, electonic materials and many more. Bruker's industry-leading atomic force microscopes (AFMs) incorporate the very latest advances in AFM techniques to enable the widest array of nanoscale materials research.

Using electron microscopes, another well-established method to characterize new materials and nanomaterials on the micro and nanometer scale, Bruker provides high-end analysis tools for mapping chemical element distribution down to traces or single atoms as well as crystallographic orientation. These tools include EDS on SEM, EDS on TEM and STEM, EBSD, WDS and Micro-XRF on SEM.

In addition, methods such as IR, UV, or FT-IR spectroscopy, NMR, EPR, or MS, X-ray diffraction and scattering are considered important due to two essential reasons: X-ray diffraction is virtually non-destructive, and X-ray photons with a wavelength in the nanometer range are the ideal sensor for the nanocosmos.

X-ray diffraction offers a number of different dedicated methods to investigate nano-structures: X-ray Reflectometry (XRR) determines layer thickness, roughness, and density; High-Resolution X-ray Diffraction (HRXRD) helps to verify layer thickness, roughness, chemical composition, lattice spacing and mismatches, relaxation, etc.; X-ray diffuse scattering to determine lateral and transversal correlations, distortions, density, and porosity; in-plane grazing incidence diffraction (IP-GID) to study lateral correlations of thinnest organic and inorganic layers, and depth profiling; Small Angle X-ray Scattering (SAXS) in transmission or grazing incidence SAXS (GISAXS) in reflection to determine the size, the shape, the distribution, orientation, and correlation of nano-particles present in solids or solutions.

For all different analytical tasks, Bruker offers a Diffraction Solution of its product portfolio D8 ADVANCE, D8 DISCOVER, or the NANOSTAR. On top of this, Bruker’ Super Speed Solutions with integrated Turbo X-ray Source provide capabilities for a laboratory instrument which makes some travel to a synchrotron source obsolete.

FT-IR spectroscopy serves as a complimentary analytic method providing - in contrast to the nano range measurement techniques - large-area (µm-cm) spectral information of nanomaterials to control the large-scale quality, structural reproducibility, and therefore the feasibility of the new materials.