Shyamsunder Erramilli

Professor Erramilli works on developing high-resolution infrared microscopy for studying biological systems. Images with spatial and temporal information add to our understanding of these systems. Vibrational spectroscopy is an exquisitely sensitive tool for studying the many biomolecular systems that exhibit characteristic “fingerprint” absorption bands. Combining this sensitivity with microscopy allows the imaging of living systems without using stains or labels. But conventional infrared microscopy is limited to poor spatial resolution set by the diffraction limit associated with the longer wavelengths involved. Scanning near-field infrared microscopy is used to break the diffraction limit without sacrificing the spectral sensitivity. A variety of bright infrared sources are used – broadband synchrotron radiation, free electron lasers, ultra fast tunable infrared lasers, and quantum cascade lasers.

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