A scattering-type scanning nearfield optical microscope probes materials at the nanoscale

An MIT physicist has built a new instrument of interest to MIT researchers across a wide range of disciplines because it can quickly and relatively inexpensively determine a variety of important characteristics of a material at the nanoscale. It’s capable of not only determining internal properties of a material, such as how that material’s electrical or optical conductivity changes over exquisitely short distances, but also visualizing individual molecules, like proteins.