Posted on August 20, 2012

Keck Foundation Awards $1 Million for Super-Resolution Microscope

The University of Houston has announced a three-year, $1 million grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation to build a super-resolution microscope that could lead to advances in environmental studies and materials science.

The grant will enable associate professor of chemistry Steven Baldelli — in collaboration with Kevin Kelly, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice University — to enhance the way scientists study the chemical properties of an array of surfaces, from plastics and metals to cells and water. The new microscope will combine the current method of sum frequency generation (SFG) with a technique called compressive sensing imaging, enabling researchers to break down data into localized regions and see the reactions of specific areas.

"If you look at a piece of metal, some parts will be shiny, some dull, some rusty," said Baldelli. "The chemistry is not uniform across the surface. This new microscope will capture and provide data for all the areas. Current techniques blur the details of specific regions." Knowing more about the various regions of a surface will be useful for studies of minerals and natural water surfaces, as well as for making different materials such as metals, alloys, and polymers, he added.

The team already has built a prototype of the microscope, and the grant will fund the purchase of a faster laser, enabling researchers to construct a device with improved image resolution and data acquisition speed. "About two-thirds of the groups using SFG already have a laser with fast acquisition," said Baldelli. "Once we build and test this combined SFG and compressive-sensing microscope, other groups should be able to implement the technique without too much additional expense."