"Toward sustained, stable Raman imaging of large samples at the nanoscale"

Raman spectroscopy, an optical microscopy technique, is a non-destructive chemical analysis technique that provides rich molecular fingerprint information about chemical structure, phase, crystallinity, and molecular interactions. The technique relies on the interaction of light with chemical bonds within a material. However, since light is a wave, optical microscopes are unable to resolve distances less than half the wavelength of the light incident on the sample. This is known as the "diffraction limit," which prevents Raman spectroscopy and other optical microscopy techniques from reaching nanoscale resolutions.