How do you get to know a material that you cannot see?
That is a question that researchers studying nanomaterials--objects with features at the sub-micrometer scales such as quantum dots, nanoparticles and nanotubes--are seeking to answer.
Though recent discoveries--including a super-resolution microscopy which won the Nobel Prize in 2014--have greatly enhanced scientists' capacity to use light to learn about these small-scale objects, the wavelength of the inspecting radiation is always much larger than the scale of the nano-objects being studied. For example, nanotubes and nanowires-the building blocks of next-generation electronic devices-have diameters that are hundreds of times smaller than the light could resolve. Researchers must find ways to circumvent this physical limitation in order to achieve sub-wavelength spatial resolution and explore the nature of these materials for future computers.
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