Researchers from the Nanooptics Group at CIC nanoGUNE
(San Sebastian) demonstrate that nanoscale infrared imaging—which
is established as a surface-sensitive technique—can be employed for
chemical nanoidentification of materials that are located up to 100
nm below a surface. The results further show that the infrared
signatures of thin surface layers differ from that of subsurface
layers of the same material, which can be exploited to distinguish
the two cases. The findings, recently published in Nature
Communications, push the technique one important step further to
quantitative chemometrics at the nanoscale in three
dimensions.
