The IRIS infrared beamline on the BESSY II storage ring now offers a fourth option for characterising materials, cells and even molecules on different length scales. The team has prolonged the IRIS beamline with an end station for nanospectroscopy and nanoimaging that permits spatial resolutions right down to below 30 nanometres. The instrument can be available to external user groups.
The infrared beamline IRIS on the BESSY II storage ring is the one infrared beamline in Germany that can be available to external user groups and is subsequently in great demand. Dr Ulrich Schade, in control of the beamline, and his team proceed to develop the instruments to enable unique, state-of-the-art experimental techniques in IR spectroscopy.
As a part of a recent major upgrade to the beamline, the team, along with the Institute of Chemistry at Humboldt University Berlin, has built an extra infrared near-field microscope.
“With the nanoscope, we will resolve structures smaller than a thousandth of the diameter of a human hair and thus reach the innermost structures of biological systems, catalysts, polymers and quantum materials,” says Dr Alexander Veber, who led this extension.
The brand new nanospectroscopy end station relies on a scanning optical microscope and enables imaging and spectroscopy with infrared light with a spatial resolution of greater than 30 nm. To exhibit the performance of the brand new end station, Veber analysed individual cellulose microfibrils and imaged cell structures. All end stations can be found to national and international user groups.
