Renishaw recently reported on the use of its SEM-SCA interface at the Vibrational Spectroscopy Core Facility of the University of Sydney, a professional services unit that houses one of the largest concentrations of state-of-the-art Raman and FT-IR spectrometers in Australia.
The research interests of facility users are diverse and applications include nanotechnology; materials science; art and archaeology; polymer science; pharmaceutics; environmental; forensics; mineralogy and gemmology; medical diagnostics; disease mechanisms; and other life sciences.
Dr Elizabeth Carter, manager of the Vibrational Spectroscopy Core Facility, leads a team whose research interests focus on biological materials. Vibrational spectroscopy is now commonly used to investigate a range of biological samples from the outermost layer of the body to its inner depths. Raman spectroscopy is a non-destructive, non-invasive analytical technique that provides information about the molecular composition, structure and interactions within a sample. This technique is used to identify and investigate the biochemical changes that accompany the manifestation of pre-disease.
Dr Carter said: “We like using this technique because of the ability to obtain morphological, elemental, chemical, physical and electronic information from the same region of a sample without relocating it between the two instruments. Typically we prefer to use a multi-modal approach to spectroscopy and we encourage our users also to use infrared (IR), X-ray fluorescence (XRF), particle-induced X-ray emission (PIXE) and synchrotron radiation-based techniques. The major benefit offered by the SEM-SCA is the ability to collect a vast amount of complementary data from two analytical techniques.”
www.renishaw.com/SEMRaman