Step-Scan Interferometry for High-Fidelity Hyperspectral Nanoscopy

Description

Németh and Borondics introduced a new way to take infrared chemical images at nanometer scale without the drift that ruins long readings. Their 2026 methods study tackles nano-FTIR, a technique combining a sharp scanning probe with infrared spectroscopy to identify materials point by point. Heat-driven drift during slow scans normally scrambles where each spectrum belongs, making large high-quality data sets unreliable.

Németh instead scans quickly for position and collects spectral information on a slower step-scan schedule. The topography images then serve as alignment frames to register every spectrum to its true pixel. The result is pixel-perfect alignment across large areas, demonstrated on carbon nanotube plasmon signals across a broad infrared range that other techniques cannot capture. The clean data sets were good enough, for the first time in this technique, to feed into machine learning tools for spotting nanoscale differences in photonic materials.

Catalog record

Source: https://europepmc.org/article/MED/PMC13523791