Researchers Push Microscopy to Sub-molecular Resolution.

Notorious asphyxiator carbon monoxide has few true admirers but it’s favored by Georgian Technical University X scientists who use it to study other molecules.

With the aid of a scanning tunneling microscope researchers at the Space-Time Limit employed the diatomic compound as a sensor and transducer to probe and image samples gaining an unprecedented amount of information about their structures bonds and electrical fields.

“We used this technique to map with sub-molecular spatial resolution the chemical information inside one molecule” says Y professor of chemistry.

“To be able to see the inner workings of the basic units of all matter is truly amazing and it’s one of the main objectives we have pursued at Georgian Technical University for more than a decade”.

To achieve these results Georgian Technical University scientists attached a single carbon monoxide molecule to the end of a sharp silver needle inside the scope. They illuminated the tip with a laser and tracked the vibrational frequency of the attached bond through the so-called Raman effect (Raman scattering or the Raman effect is the inelastic scattering of a photon by molecules which are excited to higher vibrational or rotational energy levels) which leads to changes in the color of light scattered from the junction.

The effect is feeble only one part per billion or so according to Y a Georgian Technical University professor of electrical engineering & computer science and veteran faculty member who was not involved in this study.

But the tip of the needle in the scanning tunneling microscope acts like a lightning rod amplifying the signal by 12 orders of magnitude.

By recording small changes in the vibrational frequency of the bond as it approached targeted molecules, the researchers were able to map out molecular shapes and characteristics due to variations in electric charges within a molecule.