From the Publishers: Preparing for the Upturn
Application Notebook
However, as the saying goes, things are rarely as good or as bad as they seem.
When we last addressed our readers in this space in the February 2009 Application Notebook, the landscape of the marketplace was certainly different than it is today. We were preparing for a Pittcon that many were predicting would fare very badly, the economy as a whole was in a steep decline, and in general, things were somewhat precarious in the world of materials analysis.
Michael J. Tessalone
However, as the saying goes, things are rarely as good or as bad as they seem, and we have seen this borne out over the last few months. Pittcon did very well despite the dire predictions, the market as a whole has made strides toward a recovery, and as you will see in this, the September issue of The Application Notebook, the field of materials analysis continues to thrive, with new research being performed and new applications of spectroscopic techniques being discovered every day. Collected here are application notes on such hot-button topics as analyzing children's toys for toxic levels of lead and other heavy metals, handheld FT-IR instrumentation for pharmaceutical analysis, and spectroscopy for testing during biotherapeutic antibody development, among many others.
Edward Fantuzzi
In a market as critical to everyday life as this one, the upturn is never far away, and The Application Notebook is here to bring readers those advances in life-saving research and instrumentation that will lead the way to recovery. And as always, we want and value your feedback, so if there is a critical issue that you are not seeing, either here or in the monthly issues of Spectroscopy, please feel free to contact any of our staff members using the contact information in our masthead. If you would like information about appearing in a future issue of The Application Notebook, this information can be found on p. 35, and either we or East Coast sales manager Stephanie Shaffer would be happy to answer any questions you might have.
In the meantime, please enjoy the issue.
Michael J. Tessalone
Science Group Publisher
Edward Fantuzzi
Publisher
Getting accurate IR spectra on monolayer of molecules
April 18th 2024Creating uniform and repeatable monolayers is incredibly important for both scientific pursuits as well as the manufacturing of products in semiconductor, biotechnology, and. other industries. However, measuring monolayers and functionalized surfaces directly is. difficult, and many rely on a variety of characterization techniques that when used together can provide some degree of confidence. By combining non-contact atomic force microscopy (AFM) and IR spectroscopy, IR PiFM provides sensitive and accurate analysis of sub-monolayer of molecules without the concern of tip-sample cross contamination. Dr. Sung Park, Molecular Vista, joined Spectroscopy to provide insights on how IR PiFM can acquire IR signature of monolayer films due to its unique implementation.
