In this Issue:
Local
Section News
It is once again time for the Baltimore-Washington section of the Society for Applied Spectroscopy's annual Tour Speaker dinner. Last year there were a number of issues in arranging the tour speaker meeting and we were unable to get the speaker. This year's speaker is Dr. Craig Prater of Anasys Instruments. Dr Prater will be speaking about using Infrared Microscopy with atomic force microscopy to map and analyze samples in the nanoscale. This is an interesting application of what I might refer to as a near field technique, (I might be wrong,) to break through the diffraction limit and allow infrared measurements at a scale much less than an infrared wavelength. As you know there are a lot of things going on in the sub-micron regime. This technique gives access to the vibrational spectroscopy in the well sub-micron regime. I expect this to be an exciting talk.
Related to the Baltimore-Washington section, there are a lot of you out there who I have yet to have the honor of meeting. I am sure that there are quite a number of you who have not met each other as well. Our meetings have always been relatively small social gatherings where you will have the opportunity to talk with everyone. So give us a chance, come out and have a good meal, hear a good talk, and network.
The Dinner meeting will be held at 6:00pm Wednesday, May 27th at Eggspectation in Silver Spring, MD. The cost is $25 per person, and the menu is attached.
Reservations with menu selections are requested to assure that there is adequate supply of your dinner selection.
The web site for the local section is supported by Mike Epstein and is at http://www.mikeepstein.net/bwsas/
If you have questions or comments about the local section or would like to become more active in the local section please let me know. You can email me with your questions or comments at
John.canham@atk.com
John S. Canham, Ph.D.
Acting Chair 2013
Hoping to see you at the tour speaker meeting.
Meeting Announcements
The world around us is filled with materials and living things that have complex structures on the scale of nanometers. Cells in our body, the phones in our pockets, and even the tires on our cars owe their performance to complicated nanoscale arrangements of specialized chemical species. We need tools to help visualize and analyze these materials to gain deeper insights into how they work and discover ways to make them work better. This presentation will focus on a new technology, atomic force microscope based infrared spectroscopy (AFM-IR). The atomic force microscope (AFM) provides topographic maps of sample surfaces with nanometer scale spatial resolution. Infrared (IR) spectroscopy is one of the most widely used techniques for chemical analysis. Together these two techniques can analyze and map the chemical content of a broad range of complex systems in materials and life sciences with nanometer scale spatial resolution. This instrument is leading to exciting applications in areas that touch our lives in many ways—new materials for autos, consumer electronics, energy generation and storage, biomedical research, health care and beauty products and other areas.
Craig Prater (PhD, UC Santa Barbara) is the Chief Technical Officer at Anasys Instruments and has been involved in science and technology related to atomic force microscopy for over 25 years. Prior to joining Anasys in 2008, Craig was the Chief Technologist for Veeco Metrology (now Bruker). Craig has over a dozen issued patents and more than 50 scientific publications with a total of more than 4800 citations. Craig has a PhD in Physics from UC Santa Barbara.
About Anasys Instruments:
http://www.anasysinstruments.com/
Anasys Instruments was founded in 2005 with the focus of developing technology and instrumentation for nanoscale materials characterization. Current capabilities include nanoscale thermal analysis, atomic force microscopy and AFM-based infrared spectroscopy. Anasys is based in Santa Barbara, CA.
Photos from the Meeting:
Links to other local scientific organizations and conferences of interest:
Chemical Society of Washington, CSW, Local Section of the American Chemical Society
Maryland Section of the American Chemical Society
Past Issues of the Baltimore-Washington Section Newsletter (including Historical Events in Chemistry for those months)
April/May Historical Events in Chemistry and Spectroscopy by Leopold May, Department of Chemistry, Catholic University
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