Since the mid 1980’s, Scanning Probe Microscopy has been a catalyst for research on nanotechnologies, making the study of nano-materials affordable, and has greatly enhanced the analysis of mechanical and electrical properties of those materials, yet it has limited chemical specificity.

Raman spectroscopy has long been known as a very specific method for chemical identification. Raman mapping has become a very popular technique for chemical imaging with resolution limited by Abbe’s diffraction limit formula. In the field of biology, fluorescence microscopy has made the news with break through super-resolution techniques able to generate images with resolution down to 30nm, however this is relying on labels to identify chemical compounds.

In the past decade, AFM combined with Raman to perform TERS measurement has gained a lot of popularity with the promise to bring label-free, chemically-specific information down to a few nanometers only, however it is still a challenging technique.

In this presentation, we will go over the recent developments and the different key aspect required for successful Tip Enhanced Raman imaging: optical coupling to the Raman spectrometer, probe-tip design, and SPM methods suitable for TERS for opaque and transparent samples.

Emmanuel Leroy originally began his career at the Horiba Jobin Yvon facility in France (formerly Dilor) and moved to the USA as a Service Engineer to support the Raman products in North and South America. He was Raman Service Manager for over 5 years and then moved to Sales covering the Western United States. With the merge of the Fluorescence and Raman Divisions in 2006, Emmanuel Leroy moved to a role of Sales Support and Business Development for Raman, including interfacing with the French Research and Development team for the development of new products, the integration of existing products into process environments, or the combination of other techniques with the HORIBA Raman product line. Along with his formal duties of instrumentation development, Emmanuel is immersed in advanced Raman and Photoluminescence applications and technologies and has been involved since 2006.

Platinum Sponsors: AIST-NT, Horiba Scientific, Micro Materials, Zeiss Asylum, Hysitron, Princeton Instruments

Sponsors: AFM Workshop, American Vacuum Society, Bruker, Chemplex, JEOL USA, Kurt J. Lesker Company, Olympus, Oxford Instruments, Thermo Scientific, Zygo, Agilent Technologies, Angstrom Scientific, Cameca, FEI Company, Kratos Analytical, Oerlikon Leybold Vacuum, Ophir Photonics, Panalytical, Witec

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

• Emmanuel Leroy; NanoBio Node; Charlie Newman; Obaid Sarvana; AbderRahman N Sobh (2012), "[Illinois] Advanced Materials Characterization Workshop 2012: Technical Requirements For Successful Tip Enhanced Raman (TERS) Imaging: Towards Label-Free Chemical Imaging At The Nano-scale," https://nanohub.org/resources/14473.

1. AMC12
2. Beckman Institute
3. Illinois
4. NanoBio Node
5. TERS Imaging