The broader impact/commercial potential of this Partnerships for Innovation - Technology Translation (PFI-TT) project is to enable the nanoscale chemical imaging technology from strictly research labs to industrial in-line processes. Nanoscience and nanotechnology have revolutionized a variety of markets since their inception. Nonetheless, large-scale manufacturing of nanomaterials has lagged, partly because of the inability to efficiently qualify and control nanoscale production methods. The proposed project will develop a user-friendly, practical, and potentially portable chemical imaging system. This technology will revolutionize nanotechnology by improving quality control of future production methods and enabling new applications, ranging from data storage and optical communication to cancer detection. The probe microscope market accounts for approximately 4% of the $5.3 billion microscopy market and has been limited by measurement complexity and lack of chemical sensitivity. The proposed technology would remove these limitations, creating an opportunity for growth within the microscopy market space.
The proposed project is to prototype the transformative nanoscale chemical imaging microscopy by integrating the invented plasmonic fiber probes with commercial probe microscopes. Nanoscale chemical imaging had demonstrated potential for use in an array of applications including material science, bio-sensing, optoelectronics, and catalysis. However, due to the complex operating challenges including optical alignment times, low tip reliability, low Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR), and highly skilled technician requirements, there has been limited commercial application. This PFI-TT project will undertake prototyping activities of a fiber tip-enhanced Raman spectroscope (F-TERS), an optical fiber probe-based nanoscale chemical imaging microscopy designed to overcome these challenges while still providing the chemical composition and nanoscale morphology imaging of a sample surface. In addition, F-TERS also provides the potential for significantly improved SNR, enabling additional applications. This will be accomplished by 1) overcoming the identified hurdles of demonstrating F-TERS functionality with atomic force microscope (AFM), and 2) quantifying F-TERS performance in real-world environments with independent operators.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
