A team from North Carolina State University in Raleigh and St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y., has developed a spectroscopy technique that may enable researchers to better understand matter at the molecular level. Such an understanding could benefit the design of nanoscale materials and devices.

The technique, which the researchers call gradient-field Raman spectroscopy, incorporates near-field scanning optical microscopy to explore the anomalous vibration patterns that emerge when a sample near a metal surface is exposed to electric field gradients. The researchers suggest that this effect, which they describe in the Nov. 6 issue of Physical Review Letters, can be used to probe molecular structures at a nanometer scale.