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Nanotechnology in motion

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2012 Nanotechnology 23 060201(http://iopscience.iop.org/0957-4484/23/6/060201)
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IOP PUBLISHINGNANOTECHNOLOGY

Nanotechnology 23 (2012) 060201 (2pp)

doi:10.1088/0957-4484/23/6/060201

EDITORIAL

Nanotechnology in motion
Anna Demming
Publishing Editor,
IOP Publishing, Bristol, UK

0957-4484/12/060201+02$33.00

Microscopes provide tools of inimitable value for probing the building blocks of
the world around us. The identity of the inventor of the first microscope remains
under debate, but a name unequivocally linked with early developments in
microscopy is Robert Hooke. His Micrographia published in 1665, was the firstever bestseller in science and brought topics in microscopy to the broader public
eye with pages of detailed micrographs, most famously the fly’s eye and plantcells. Since the first microscopes in the late 16th century, ingenious alternatives tothe original optical microscopes have been developed to create images of theworld at ever smaller dimensions. Innovations include scanning probe techniquessuch as the atomic force microscope [1]. As Toshio Ando describes in a review inthis issue [2], these devices have also entered a new era in the past decade with thedevelopment of high-speed atomic force microscopy. Now, we can not only seethe nanoscale components that make up the world around us, but we can watch
them at work.
One of the first innovations in optical microscopy was the use of dyes. This
principle first came into practice with the use of ultraviolet light to reveal
previously indistinguishable features. As explained by a researcher in the early
1930s, ‘It is obvious that if the dyes used for selective staining in ordinary
microscopical work are supplemented by substances which cause a particulardetail of the structure to fluoresce with a specific colour in ultraviolet light, thenmany strings will be added to the bow of the practical microscopist’ [3]. Morerecently, emphasis on the role of plasmons—collective oscillations of electrons in
nanoscale metal structures—has received considerable research attention.
Plasmons enhance the local electromagnetic field and can lead to increased
fluorescence rates from nearby fluorophores depending on the efficiency of thecounteracting process, non-radiative transfer [4].
The 1930s also saw the development of the electron microscope, which aimed
to exceed the resolving power of diffraction-limited optical microscopes. Since
the diffraction limit is proportional to the incident wavelength, the shorter
wavelength electron beam allows smaller features to be resolved than opticallight. Ernst Ruska shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1986 for his work indeveloping the transmission electron microscope [5]. The technique continues toprovide an invaluable tool in nanotechnology studies, as demonstrated recently bya collaboration of researchers in the US, Singapore and Korea used electron andatomic force microscopy in their investigation of the deposition of gold
nanoparticles on graphene and the enhanced conductivity of the doped film [6].
The other half of the 1986 Nobel Prize was awarded jointly to Gerd Binnig andHeinrich Rohrer ‘for their design of the scanning tunnelling microscope’. The
scanning tunnelling microscope offered the first glimpses of atomic scale features,
galvanizing research in nanoscale science and technology into a burst of fruitfulactivity that persists to this day.
Instead of using the diffraction and scattering of beams to ‘see’ nanoscalestructures, the atomic force microscope developed by Binnig, Quate and Gerber inthe 1980s [1] determines the surface topology ‘by touch’. The device uses
nanoscale changes in the forces exerted on a tip as it scans the sample surface togenerate an image. As might be expected, innovations on the original atomic
force microscope have now been developed achieving ever greater sensitivities forimaging soft matter without destroying it. Recent work by collaborators at theUniversity of Bristol and the University of Glasgow used a cigar-shaped1© 2012 IOP Publishing Ltd

Printed in the UK & the USA

Nanotechnology 23 (2012) 060201

Editorialnanoparticle held in optical tweezers as the scanning tip. The technique is notdiffraction limited, imparts less force on samples than contact scanning probe
microscopy techniques, and allows highly curved and strongly scattering samples
to be imaged [7].
In this issue, Toshio Ando from the University of Kanazawa provides anoverview of developments that have allowed atomic force microscopy to movefrom rates of the order of one frame a minute to over a thousand frames per
second in constant height mode, as reported by Mervyn Miles and colleagues at
Bristol University and University College London [8]. Among the pioneers in thefield, Ando’s group demonstrated the ability to record the Brownian motion ofmyosin V molecules on mica with image capture rates of 100 x 100 pixels in 80
ms over a decade ago [9]. The developments unleash the potential of atomic force
microscopy to observe the dynamics of biological and materials systems. If
seeing is believing, the ability to present real motion pictures of the nanoworld
cannot fail to capture the public imagination and stimulate burgeoning new
avenues of scientific endeavour. Nearly 350 years on from the publication
Micrographia, images in microscopy have moved from the page to the movies.

References[1] Binnig G, Quate C F, and Gerber Ch 1986 Phys. Rev. Lett. 56 930–3[2] Ando T 2012 Nanotechnology 23 062001[3] J G 1934 Nature 134 635–6[4] Bharadwaj P, Anger P and Novotny L 2007 Nanotechnology 18 044017[5] The Nobel Prize in Physics 1986 Nobelprize.org[6] Kim K K, Reina A, Shi Y, Park H, Li L-J, Lee Y H and Kong J 2010 Nanotechnology
21 285205[7] Phillips D B, Grieve J A, Olof S N, Kocher S J, Bowman R, Padgett M J, Miles M J andCarberry D M 2011 Nanotechnology 22 285503[8] Picco L M, Bozec L, Ulcinas A, Engledew D J, Antognozzi M, Horton M A and Miles M J
2007 Nanotechnology 18 044030[9] Ando T, Kodera N, Takai E, Maruyama D, Saito K and Toda A 2001 Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci.
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