Alberto Ferreras | Zamora (EFE).- A group of microscopists experts in handling powerful microscopes that can cost up to a million euros and are capable of detecting forces of a millionth of a newton meet at the “Forces and Tunnel Conference” that takes place in Zamora to exchange knowledge and techniques for the use of these devices that allow us to enter the world of nanoscience.
For three days, 140 experts who work at the nanoscopic scale in multidisciplinary teams made up mainly of physicists, but also biologists, biomedical doctors or chemists, meet in Zamora, in an interaction between different disciplines that is key to advancing in scanning probe microscopy and its applications in fields such as medicine, biology or energy efficiency, among others.
One of the members of the congress organizing committee, Miriam Jaafar, from the Condensed Matter Physics Institute (Ifimac) of the Autonomous University of Madrid, explained to Efe that Spain is a leading community in this technique for scanning the nanoworld.
In fact, the second scanning probe microscope built worldwide arrived at the Autonomous University of Madrid almost 40 years ago and “from there a lot of groups germinated that have spread throughout the rest of Spain”, he pointed out. .
Applications in energy, health or environment
“We cover several branches and we can be in different challenges of society, from energy, health or the environment, in this sense microscopists are well positioned,” he added.
With a microscope of this power, for example, a virus can be detected in the stage prior to infection, a process that is “intrinsically biological” but physical tools are used to characterize it, hence the importance of multidisciplinary laboratories. , has exposed his colleague from Ifimac and coordinator of the Zamora meeting Guilherme Vilhena.
Likewise, Manuela Garnica, a microscopist from the Imdea Nanoscience Institute, has justified the incorporation of chemists into this equipment to study how a molecule is formed or how a reaction occurs on an atomic scale. “In the end, there are many of us working together on a very multidisciplinary thing that is nanoscience”, she explained.
Work at 272 degrees Celsius below zero
It has also given an idea of what a scanning probe microscope can cost and, although there are very simple designs that have a lower cost, others that require working in ultra-high vacuum conditions and temperatures of one degree Kelvin (-272 ºC ) come to be worth half or one million euros.
Of course, it also has its profitability because after laboratory research comes practical applications.
In this sense, Pablo Merino, a researcher at the CSIC’s Institute of Materials Sciences in Madrid, told EFE that “things happen by seeing new materials on a smaller scale and interpreting their properties.”
In this way, new, more efficient materials can be designed, for example, for photovoltaic panels or for energy storage.
Reference citation for the microscopist community
At the Zamora meeting, attendees were able to follow forty lectures and access sixty scientific posters focused on the use of scanning probe microscopy for the study of materials and the understanding of electronic, optical, magnetic and mechanical phenomena under different conditions. .
Thus, the community of microscopists goes beyond what the human eye can see to contribute to developing materials with novel properties that aim to solve different social challenges from the study of the nanoworld. EFE