Anasys Instruments Receives Innovation Award

Anasys Instruments’ CEO Roshan Shetty was presented with a Microscopy Today 2011 Innovation Award for the company’s AFM-IR platform during the 2011 M&M Annual conference held this year in Nashville,TN. The AFM-IR technique, developed by Dr Alexandre Dazzi at the University of Paris-Sud, uses an AFM probe as the IR absorbance detector and hence obtains IR spectroscopy at up to 2 orders of magnitude better than traditional IR spectroscopy. It also provides the AFM with true chemical ID capability, said the company.

Commenting on the impact of AFM-IR which led to the award, internationally-recognised spectroscopist, Dr Curtis Marcott, Senior Partner at Light Light Solutions and the 2011 President of the Society for Applied Spectroscopy, said: “the combination of atomic force microscopy (AFM) and infrared (IR) spectroscopy as manifested in the new technique of AFM-IR is one of the most important recent developments in the important field of IR microspectroscopy

and chemical imaging. The importance of IR spectroscopy to our scientific infrastructure needs no introduction given the size of the industry and the breadth of its application. However, the fundamental physical limit imposed by diffraction has prevented the use of this important technology to applications requiring high spatial resolution which is the case for many of the exciting new issues in polymers and the life sciences.”