Lecture:  Microscopy by Feel

Kathy Walsh, UIUC Materials Research Laboratory

Thursday, December 12, 2024. 1:30 - 3:00 p.m.

Location: Osher Classroom and Zoom

The most familiar form of optical microscopy uses visible light reflected from an object’s surface to obtain an image of that object. To measure features on an object’s surface which are smaller than visible light can see, other forms of observation must be employed. Atomic force microscopy is an imaging technique that relies on feel, not on photons. Gently tracing the surface with a sharp probe (which is about a thousand times smaller than a record player stylus) allows this technique to measure surface textures on the scale of nanometers and to build up nanoscale 3D images of surfaces.

Lecturer:  Kathy Walsh spent time in several fields of physics before focusing on microscopy as a career. She received her Ph.D. from Michigan State University in 2013 (Scanning Probe Microscopy of Protein Nanowires) and came to work at the University of Illinois Materials Research Laboratory promptly thereafter. As a senior research scientist at the Materials Research Lab, she spends her days training researchers to use scientific instruments and helping them optimize their measurements. Her favorite thing to do with atomic force microscopy is to find out what ordinary, everyday objects look like on the nanoscale.