Showcase Science 2007 - The Exhibits Hall

The Exhibits Hall 2007
Oundle School, Northants - Thursday 15th March 2007
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Imaging Nano-scale Materials: use the force!
Department of Physics, University of Warwick, COVENTRY CV4 7AL *Dr Gavin Bell*
The ability to study materials and objects at the nanometre scale is crucial for many areas of modern science and engineering. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) is a simple but powerful technique which allows us to produce images of a huge range of materials at the nano-scale. It relies on monitoring the tiny forces between a surface and ultra-sharp probe which are in close contact, but can be extended to work via other forces such as electrical and magnetic interactions. In the exhibition we will perform live AFM imaging of a wide variety of nano-scale materials studied in the Department of Physics at Warwick, including semiconductor quantum dots and metal nano-particle arrays.
Carbon nanotube AFM tip Electron microscope image of an AFM probe. At the end of the long pyramid-shaped tip a carbon nanotube is just visible. This provides an ultra-sharp probe for measuring sub-nanometre resolution.				DVD The information on a DVD is stored as a series of tiny bumps or pits which encode digital 1s and 0s. The main reason a DVD can store so much more data than a CD is that the pits are smaller and more closely spaced. The image is a 10 micrometre square section of a DVD obtained using an atomic force microscope (AFM) in 'tapping' mode. The pits are around 50 nm deep and 700 nm apart.

The Poster
Presentations are judged and prizes totalling
£1500
are to be awarded at Showase Science 2007.

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