How does the Anasys Mirage Reach the Submicron Level?

The Spectroscopy community has been eagerly following information on the Anasys Mirage – a system from Anasys Instruments which is said to actually be capable of breaking the diffraction limit via the utilisation of photothermal infrared spectrometry (PTIR).

Many have wondered how exactly tis system from Anasys Instruments seems to have cracked a very longstanding problem in the IR Spectroscopy sciences, and it is due to a novel approach to combining two different scientific methods for excellent and very accurate results which are sure to open a whole range of possibilities to researchers from varying fields of science and academia.

The Anasys Mirage is unlike anything to have ever come before, and is truly groundbreaking by the virtue that this piece of machinery is capable of breaking the diffraction limit by virtue of its tunable, pulsating Infrared laser.

The tunable infrared laser in the Anasys Mirage is tuned to a wavelength which allows for molecular vibration in the sample. You might consider this approach to not be very different from AFM-IR for instance, but it gets interesting by the fact that there is a second laser on a visible probe which then measures the diffraction which occurs when the sample then vibrates to the laser, when they are on corresponding wavelengths. Photothermal expansion, essentially.

The expansion of the sample is measured by a visible probe laser which also relays information back to the Anasys Mirage. This information and data is the measurements of the photothermal response which is executed by the sample in response.

Anasys Instruments made the discovery that when the reflected visible laser is modulated at the IR pump laser repetition rate, it is directly proportional to the absorption coefficient to the sample at the wavenumber. Therefore, the laser can be tuned to obtain a working, viable spectra in order to get results even on the submicron level.