Quartz crystal microbalances enable new microscale analytic technique
Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - 15:30
in Physics & Chemistry
A new chemical analysis technique developed by a research group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology uses the shifting ultrasonic pitch of a small quartz crystal to test the purity of only a few micrograms of material. Since it works with samples close to a thousand times smaller than comparable commercial instruments, the new technique should be an important addition to the growing arsenal of measurement tools for nanotechnology, according to the NIST team.