PRESENTATION BY
Dr James Rice
School of Physics
University College Dublin

PRESENTATION TITLE
Super Resolution Infra-red Microscopy: Nano-IR

ABSTRACT
Optical microscopy is an important and widely used method of imaging a range of structures and processes in materials from semiconductors to biological cells.  The resolution of optical microscopy has a physical limit, the diffraction limit.  The maximum resolution in optical microscopy is found to be ca. /2. As a result of diffraction imaging in the infrared using electromagnetic radiation at 5 m corresponding to an infrared (IR) absorption frequency of 2000 cm-1 the image resolution will be 2.5 m, well above the nanometre length scale.  Diffraction means that optical microscopy technology cannot image on the nanoscale.  As a consequence the application of optical microscopy to the study of nanoscale functional materials or to emerging disciplines such as nanobiology is limited.  Our research examines a number of approaches to overcome this image resolution limitation presented by diffraction.  Outlined will be a near-field method that combines AFM and optical methods to enable nanoscale IR absorption imaging referred to as nano-IR.  In addition to this will be an outline of work on nanomaterials as supports for nano-imaging.

ABOUT THE PRESENTER
Dr James Rice is the founding member and Principal Investigator (PI) of the UCD Nanophotonics and Nanoscopy group since his arrival to UCD in 2008.  Previously, following his studies in the University of Sussex (BSc) and Queen’s University Belfast (PhD), Dr Rice worked in the Laboratoire Aimé Cotton CNRS Paris XI and Oxford University, Clarendon Lab where he was a college tutor at Lady Margaret Hall.  Dr Rice has authored several book chapters, more than 100 articles, reports and letters in the fields of nanophotonics and nano-optics and has given more than 50 talks at international conferences and universities.  He is currently a SFI PI and has been a PI on a number of further SFI, Enterprise Ireland and international grants.

REFRESHMENTS WILL BE PROVIDED AT 11h45

For further information, please contact:
Dr Tofail Syed, Tel. No: (061) 234132or Email: tofail.syed@ul.ie